


Gay

by test_kard_girl



Series: The Reverseverse [4]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Ensemble Cast, M/M, Multi, Other, Season/Series 01, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-31
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-07 02:52:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/743349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/test_kard_girl/pseuds/test_kard_girl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gay: Episode 3 of the 'Reverseverse' series. </p><p>Kurt isn't so good at saying sorry. But he figures, winning a football game might be a start. If he wins it busting his moves to a certain Beyonce number, so much the better.</p><p>Meanwhile, Will receives an offer he can't refuse (that has absolutely nothing to do with a scheming Sue Sylvester); and Tina unexpectedly finds herself as the glee club's new featured soloist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kurt feels like he's lost the ability to even  _hear_  a rhythm, let alone hold one. He knows these steps  _backwards_ ; inside-out...But today his limbs are just too big for the rest of him, and he's all  _Bambi and his back-up dancers_ ; mutilating Beyonce one messed-up  _chasse_  at a time.  
  
When Tina catches a heel on the carpet, yelping as her ankle turns about seventy degrees in the wrong direction, Kurt's almost relieved to smack his thumb down on his iPod's pause button:  
  
"What the  _blazing fairies_  Tee?"  
  
Tina glowers balefully back at him. "It's not me, it's the freakin'  _shoes_..."  
  
Kurt shares a glance with an out-of-breath Mercedes, who flicks a dismissive hand: "You been wearin' those shoes for the last three weeks."  
  
"Well today they're hurting, ok?" Tina retorts, dropping down onto the edge of the sofa and ripping the offending footwear away from her delicate tootsies.  
  
Kurt watches her, biting the inside of his mouth.  
  
"You know," He suggests dryly "I may have a pair of Mukluks upstairs more suited to your skill level."  
  
"Oh really?" Tina looks unamused, flicking her ponytail over her shoulder. "And I think I might have a pair of  _breasts_  more suited to your outfit."  
  
Kurt opens his mouth again, but Mercedes catches his wrist:  
  
"Hey, ok bitches, what about just breathing?"  
  
\--Which Kurt thinks is pretty rich of her, considering how much she enjoys shit-stirring. He grits his teeth as she squeezes his arm again: "How about we take five and go over something else?"  
  
"How about we don't?" Kurt objects, slipping out of his friend's grasp. She's been awful touchy-feely lately and she  _knows_  it freaks him out. "How about we  _get better at this one_?"  
  
Tina drops her shoes to the floor with a clunk. "And what is up your butt tonight?"  
  
Mercedes coughs into her fist. "Not Puckerman?"  
  
Kurt turns his head, glowering and wishing hard that her weave would catch fire.  
  
Jealously really does nothing for her skin tone.  
  
Suddenly, there's an ominous bang from upstairs-- the front door slamming-- and Kurt flinches, shoulders stiffening like a startled hare.  
  
"Kurt?" He hears his father's voice call half-heartedly from the hallway; the muffled sound of yet another coat being forced into the closet. "You in?"  
  
"Crap." Kurt mutters, following the sound of his father's footsteps with his eyes as they head towards the kitchen.  
  
"He's home early." Mercedes notes, catching his eye and raising a quizzical eyebrow.  
  
" _Deadliest Catch_  is on." Kurt returns distastefully.  
  
"You realise there's pretty much no point in us doing this?" Tina interrupts baldly, and the other two glance down at her. Kurt purses his lips hard enough to risk scowl-lines, but Tina just shrugs into their silence:  
  
"Every dance break from now on is going straight to those Cheeri-hos." She explains.  
  
"They don't have the juice to carry it off." Kurt dismisses instantly.  
  
" _We_  don't have the juice;  _look_  at us."  
  
Mercedes shakes her head, fixing a sceptical hand on her hip. "Two weeks and no-one's even gonna care they're in the club." She predicts. "The novelty'll wear off-- right babe?"  
  
She obviously expects Kurt's support for that comment, he thinks, as he stares blankly back at her. Mercedes rolls her eyes:  
  
"Just saying..."  
  
They all jump as Burt Hummel's fist pounds against his son's doorframe:  
  
"Kurt? You down there?"  
  
"We're rehearsing!" Kurt hollers back, curling his arms tight around his spandex-clad chest. Behind him, Tina and Mercedes do a little awkward shuffle as they remember they're not wearing any pants. Luckily, the door's locked. Kurt always makes sure of that-- heaven knows he needs  _some_  privacy.  
  
"Oh. Ok." His dad sounds mildly embarrassed. "...You, uh, had something to eat?"  
  
"Dad, I'm sixteen, I can take care of myself." Kurt retorts, pressing his fingertips into his temple.  
  
(Which may not be precisely true, at least as regards the food thing, because Kurt hasn't actually eaten anything since those two renegade Tostitos at lunchtime. But that's more of a lifestyle choice than negligence; and anyway it's not any of his father's business).  
  
His dad pauses, and Kurt hears a sound like his forehead thumping softly against the door. "Right. Cool." He proclaims eventually.  
"Well, there's pizza in the fridge if you want it."  
  
" _Pizza_?" Mercedes mouths, and Kurt makes a face:  
  
"I know, right? It's like he doesn't know me but at all..."  
  
"I could do some pizza." Tina says wistfully. Off the other two's looks she snorts: "What? It's not like it can make us  _less_  elegant. I feel like a football player with these calves."  
  
Mercedes brightens.  
  
"Hey there's an idea. if the Cheerios can't step up maybe we can break out the football team's dance skills?"  
  
"Oh god, Hudson in a leotard." Tina snorts, and Kurt forces the corner of his mouth into a smirk that doesn't match the sudden painful clench in his ribcage.  
  
"Ok, break-time's over." He decides, crossing the room over to his iPod and pressing 'Single Ladies' back to the beginning, listening carefully to makes sure his father's footsteps have reached the front room. "Let's go again-- maybe with fewer Mariah moments?" He adds bitingly, as the girls drag themselves into place behind him.  
  
But halfway round his next  _pivot arms-up arms-down_  he notices Mercedes isn't even  _trying_  to lift her knees, and Tina's kicked her shoes off again, and—worst of all— he can't even summon the energy to give a flying crap.  
  
She might even be right, he admits forlornly to himself an hour later, face illuminated in the cool glow of the refrigerator. He tugs a corner from his dad's pizza and pops it in his mouth before the bile-inducing carbohydrate guilt kicks in.  
  
Maybe the Cheerios  _would_  dance it better.  
  
He snorts: maybe even the football players.  
  
 _Maybe even Puckerman_ , a snide little voice suggests, and Kurt slams the fridge door, wholeheartedly blaming the extra mozzarella.

  
  
*

  
"Twenty!"  
  
Puck fumbles the catch, ball bouncing skittishly between his palms until it finally drops down dead at his feet.  
  
"Dude; wanna stop aiming at my crotch?" He spits, scooping the ball up and snapping it back at Karofsky's head.  
  
Karofsky snorts: "Not my fault you're such a short-ass."  
  
"Hey, this short-ass is the one scoring your touchdowns, if you can get that through your fat skull--"  
  
Puck feels warning fingers close around his arm:  
  
"Puck, chill. It was a bad ball to start." Finn says placatingly. He takes the ball from Karofsky, looking just as weary as everyone else stuck out on the football field on the wettest Tuesday in September. "Let's start over: 'Kay, uh, everyone, let’s try that Pro Left 25 again…"  
  
Puck glances away, squinting at the dead-black sky and tuning out Finn's voice so he doesn't accidentally punch the guy in the throat. After all the shit and build-up to his glee audition, and all weekend with Kurt’s mind-games still gnawing away at his synapses, the thought of turning his brain off and just taking down some bodies at football practice had sounded like blessed relief. What he'd kinda forgotten was that the football team sucks; and just 'cos the jocks aren't as sneaky about their assholery as the gleeks are, doesn't mean they aren't still assholes.  
  
"Hey shit; check out Langenthal."  
  
Puck's shaken out of his sulk by MacIntosh whacking his shoulder, turning him towards the goal post at the opposite end of the field. Puck just about manages not to sock the dude one back, when he clocks what their linebacker is gaping at.  
  
Fifty yards away, Marcus Langenthal— their lone, yellow-bellied kicker— is flinching under Coach Tanaka's pudgy shadow, reeling up to take what must be his hundredth field-goal attempt this hour.  
  
As the team looks on, Langenthal takes another futile run up, striking the ball with his left foot the exact same way he always does; and when the ball sails blissfully six metres right of the upright, Tanaka marches right up to him and blasts his whistle in his face:  
  
"No points!  _Again_! Where the hell are your balls Langerthal? 'Cos they sure as hell ain't flying over that crossbar!!"  
  
Tanaka's bellowing echoes round the bleachers, making a couple of curious freshman do a synchronised one-eighty and high-tail it back to hockey practice.  
  
Azimio whistles: "Holy damn..."  
  
As one the rest of the McKinley Titans draw into a huddle, eyes widening.  
  
"How many has he kicked?" Finn asks tremulously.  
  
"I counted fifteen." Mike provides, in a whisper nothing short of awestruck.  
  
Puck wets his lips, holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the drizzle as he watches Langenthal set up once more. Beside him, Tanaka paces the ground like an antagonised rhino, whistle bouncing up and down against his impressive man-boobs.  
  
"When did Coach become such a hardass?" He wonders in an undertone.  
  
Karofsky knits his eyebrows as his brain chugs into motion: "I heard Sylvester busted Sandy Ryerson. Got an amendment on his restraining order or something."  
  
"No shit." Matt hisses.  
  
Mike nods: "That's do it."  
  
Langenthal kicks again and this time when it misses, Tanaka storms off the field, smashes his head a couple of times against the hood of his golf buggy and storms back.  
  
Finn nudges Puck's elbow.  
  
"We should, uh, get back to work." He suggests, obviously imagining how his own skull would stand up against the fiberglass roof of a golf buggy.  
  
Puck's not totally convinced of his odds, to be honest, but he doesn't say it out loud.  
  
An unexpected movement downfield catches his eye:  
  
"Uh-oh." He intones darkly, nodding back towards their DT'd Coach and his unwilling victim.  
  
Azimio sounds incredulous: "Is M cryin'?"  
  
"Looks like."  
  
"Fuck—"  
  
"—Wait, wait, wait!" Mike jabs a finger dramatically back at Tanaka, who's just had to leap out of the way of Langenthal's football helmet, which the kicker's suddenly tugged off and thrown with at him with enough ferocity to bust a kneecap.  
  
"Holy crap." Puck stares.  
  
"He's losing it." Karofsky confirms.  
  
Helmet gone, Langenthal starts work on his cleats, hopping on one foot as his fingers rip at his laces. Tanaka's blasting his whistle like a man insane, and Langenthal's screaming, but his voice is shrill enough Puck can only make out every third word and none of them are pretty.  
  
Karofsky nudges Puck's shoulder, sounding stupidly smug:  
  
"Bet you don't get any of this shit in Nude Erections."  
  
Puck crosses his arms to stop himself breaking his knuckles off the other guy's helmet:  
  
"You wanna stop talkin' 'bout erections Karofsky? A guy might start gettin' suspicious."  
  
Karofsky goes very white, eyes darting immediately back to the shit-storm in front of them.  
  
Langenthal's managed to work one shoe free, but Tanaka's whistle seems to have deafened him into submission, and he's backing towards the changing rooms even as he aims his boot at the Coach's face.  
  
"Oh there is no way he isn't gettin' suspended for this..."  
  
"Who, M?" Azimio scoffs "Coach was baiting him, I should be callin’ the freakin’ ACLU, them dudes dos owe me--"  
  
But even as he says it, Azimio seems to remember they're not simply bystanders here as—with Langenthal disposed of— Coach's eyes swivel towards the next targets of his detox-rage.  
  
Puck feels Finn smack his shoulder, voice a good couple of octaves higher than it should have been:  
  
"Guys, let's--"  
  
But it's too late-- Tanaka's spotted them, and they all freeze like chipmunks as he marches over to them, face turning more and more puce with every step.  
  
"Think we could take 'im if he turns nasty?" Karofsky mutters from the corner of his mouth. Puck just stares.  
  
When he's half a foot away, Tanaka stops, doubling over with hands on his knees to get his breath back. Puck takes half a step back from the sudden stench of acid and BO; but he stops when he sees that Coach's eyes are mostly black and dead-looking, like little balls of liquorice. Holy shit.  
  
The Coach straightens up, fixing each of them with his blasted fisheye in turn:  
  
"Gentlemen." He announces through his wheezing:   
  
"We need a new kicker."


	2. Chapter 2

Rachel's voice swings powerfully up and down her vocal warm-ups-- the same weird collection of whale-noises she makes before every glee practice starts-- and Finn smiles and nods, concentrating really hard on being supportive and watching how her chest rises and falls, and definitely  _definitely_  not making eye-contact with anyone else in the choir room.  
  
He'd kinda thought his plan about inclusion and acceptance and Journey and stuff was a really good one. Why shouldn't everyone get along? Rachel Berry really isn't that terrifying once you get to know her, and he’s sure that the rest of the gleeks are similarly cool once you chip away the frosting. But ever since Puck and the Cheerios officially 'joined' glee, rehearsal has been the worst part of Finn’s day— and that includes Tanaka's suddenly extra-sadistic football practice. There's so much aggro shooting about the choir room Finn feels like he's trapped in one of those lazer cage thingies; y'know, bright red death-beams shooting in every direction. So: as of today he's kinda given up trying to make everyone build tunnels or whatever it is, and decided instead that it's just way easier to keep smiling and imagining Rachel's boobs under her sweater.  
  
Finn feels sharp fingernails digging into his forearm.  
  
" _Ow_!"  
  
Rachel’s glowering at him: "Will you stop staring at her?"  
  
"What?" Finn protests, confused by Rachel's pursed, angry pout. He knows that by 'her' she means 'Quinn', and Finn was most definitely _not_  staring at Quinn Fabray.  
  
Rach crosses her arms over her sweater-vest: "You were staring at her breasts.  _Again_."  
  
"I wasn't!" Finn protests, rubbing his arm: "I was staring at y—"  
  
He doesn't finish. He's pretty sure 'I was staring at yours' won't win him up any more kudos.  
  
Artie nudges him in the ribs: "Can't blame you dawg," he mutters behind his hand, glancing between him and Rachel's sour expression. "No-one said dumb can't be pretty... Though, I guess you guys already knew that."  
  
Rachel opens her mouth to make some cutting retort, but she jumps along with everyone else when the door bangs open and Mr Schuester strides in, looking irritated and with a petulant-looking Puck trailing in his wake, bringing with him a waft of nicotine and an expression like he wouldn't be here at all if the choir director hadn't dragged him in by the short and curlies.  
  
“Oh, that reminds me.” Kurt pipes up suddenly, replacing his shades in front of eyes, which until now had been perched on top of his head. “Finn Hudson: I need to speak to you—”  
  
"—Awful quiet in here for a bunch of showchoir champions doing their vocal warmups." Schue says warningly, as he shuffles the sheaf of music in his arms.  
  
Finn gulps guiltily, but Kurt just waves him away, joining the rest of New Directions scurrying into their usual height-order line-up.  
  
Like every time, Puck ends up on Finn’s left side: second-tallest despite the six inches between them. Finn mutters to him from the side of his mouth:  
  
"Didn't think you were coming."  
  
Puck doesn't even unclench his jaw to answer.  
  
"Wasn't my choice.” He snorts. “Schue dragged me outta detention. Apparently showchoir really  _does_  rule this school."  
  
Finn straightens up. Oh.  
  
He smiles as Mr Schue hands him his music, but it collapses into a grimace again when he spots the title.  _West Side Story_? Isn't that some Broadway shit? Probably means more dancing. Finn rubs reflexively at the ichy spots on his hands where Mr Schue once drew a big permanent-markered 'L' and 'R' to help him out with his steps. Man, he sucks at dancing...  
  
"Excuse me, Mr Schue?" Rachel's voice questions sweetly from the very other end of the line, and everyone else lifts their eyes to look at her. "This is in the wrong key."  
  
"No it's actually the right key." Mr Schue returns in an identical voice, and Finn feels the hair at the back of his neck stand on end.  
  
He glances at his girlfriend, who, to her credit, just slightly raises her eyebrows, tapping a fingernail against her paper. "...But this is the alto part."  
  
"Yup." Mr Schuester agrees, nodding to the next person along in the height order. "Tina's doing the solo."  
  
There's a tiny gasp (which Finn thinks is way too high to be anyone but Kurt) and he turns with the rest of the room to stare at Tina, who's clutching the music disbelievingly in white-knuckled fingers, frozen like a rabbit on the highway.  
  
Artie's on Rachel's other side, and sounds incredulous: "Seriously…?"  
  
"I'm sorry. There must be some sort of mix-up." Rachel objects, stepping out of line and commanding Schue's full attention: "Maria is  _my_  part.  _I'm_  the female lead."  
  
Finn swallows heavily as he feels part of his stomach start to cave in.  
  
Rachel points an accusing finger at the wall. "My name has been at the top of the Glist for the last sixteen months;  _continuously_ \--"  
  
"--Well y'know what Rach, I'm starting to think the Glist is pretty outdated." Mr Schuester returns with relish, mouth an ugly rictus as he stares back at his star. "As of last week's auditions, you'll notice half your teammates aren't even on the Glist. How is that fair?"  
  
"Fair schmair!" Rachel returns vehemently, and Finn notices Mercedes and Kurt cover their mouths to keep from giggling. "I thought I've made it very clear, anything from  _West Side Story_ goes directly to me."  
  
"And I'm making it clear that this showchoir isn't the property of Rachel Berry." Mr Schuester snaps back. "It's the property of Will Schuester."  
  
A sharp intake of breath rattles around the room. Finn feels Puck's eyes on the side of his face but doesn't meet his stare. At the other end of the line, Rachel pulls herself up to her full height, but she's still tiny and Finn wishes he could be beside her, although he knows he'd probably just make things worse.  
  
When Rach speaks again, her voice is as tight as her sweater-vest.  
  
"You're trying to punish me." She accuses.  
  
Schuester shrugs. "Not trying." He returns evenly. " _Am_. Look around you Rach." He gestures sweepingly around the room. "We're still two team members short of a competitive showchoir. You ruined our chances by turning our recruitment assembly into an orgy, and messing with my prescribed set-list is definitely not the way to get into my good-books--"  
  
"--But we have  _Cheerios_!" Rachel splutters, throwing a hand out, as if fending off vampires. "We have Finn and, and, and  _Puckerman_ ; none of them would be here if it wasn't for me!--"  
  
"--They're here  _in spite of you_  Rach." Schuester interrupts stonily, raising an eyebrow at the awkward line of jocks and Gleeks and Cheerios. His gaze rests momentarily on Finn. "Aside from Hudson. Probably." He rolls his eyes. "Anyway, I'm sure you understand that I need to pick a soloist who's not gonna turn my musical selections into soft-porn. So: bravo Tina Cohen-whatsyourname."  
  
Tina's eyes skate to the floor as Mr Schue's sarcastic applause echoes jarringly around the music room.  
  
Finn swallows heavily, desperately trying to think of something to say. But Rachel isn't finished.  
  
"Tina knows how much I respect her,” She continues bullishly “but I think she and  _everyone_  would agree with me when I say she isn't ready for such an iconic role as Mar--"  
  
"Rachel!" Mr Schuester bellows, and the room jumps once more, Rachel's eyes flashing at being so humiliated.  
  
The silence drips for a moment, before Mr Schuester asks again, very nicely:  
  
"Congratulate Tina, Rachel."  
  
Finn feels his own cheeks start to burn, watching as Rachel bites down hard on her bottom lip. He should do something, but...  
  
"Well, Rachel..?"  
  
"It's ok, Mr Schuester." Tina speaks up nervously from Rachel's side; But Mr Schuester silences her with a look.  
  
Rachel is unmoved. She just lifts her chin and holds her teacher's gaze and Finn's sure that in a second the whole room's just gonna explode from the tension, when:  
  
"Wait." Mercedes voice cracks open the icy silence, and Finn leans around Puck, Brittany and Santana to see her wrinkling her nose:  
  
"...I'm a  _Jet_?"  
  
" _Ugh_." Rachel exhales disgustedly, tossing her sheet music to the floor and storming from the room.  
  
The rest of New Directions stare numbly after her, and Finn suddenly has alarm bells claxoning in his head. Does she expect him to go after her?  _Should_ he go after her...?  
  
Finn shuffles a bit and his feet automatically start moving, but Artie's voice cuts him short:  
  
"She'll never forgive you for ruining her exit." He says wearily, eliciting a giggle that might even be from the trio of Cheerios huddling together slap-bang in the middle of the line-up.  
  
Finn glowers at them; then, for just a second, catches Tina's gaze, and the two stare blankly at each other before Tina presses a lace-gloved hand to her mouth and turns away, like she's willing herself not to throw up.  
  
Or laugh. She might be laughing.  
  
Mr Schuester's expression is stonily triumphant. "Well, we won't miss our third alto anyway, will we?" He mutters and Finn scrunches up his forehead at the horrible twisty guilt-feelings in his stomach, not managing to un-scrunch it until Mr Schuester starts shouting them into formation, and forcing the Jets and Sharks to insult each others' mothers so they can inject some genuine anger into their flaccid Disney Princess vocal chords.  
  
See, Finn thought the inclusion thing was a good idea. But for all Mr Schuester seems to have climbed on the ‘acceptance’ band-wagon, he doesn't seem hugely strung-out about not pissing-off his regulars. In fact, it's like he has some grudge against the whole lot of them, and Finn can't figure out why he’s the only one seems to think  _getting along_  would be a good idea. Like, he knows the New Directions have always thought him kinda simple. But he thinks he'd rather be dumb than mean.  
  
He screws up his face again in an angry Shark kind of way, growling at the Cheerios hissing their harmony back at him.  
  
Like, if Artie wasn't so worried about being cool, Finn's sure Tina wouldn't look half as distant as she always does; and if Rachel wasn't so possessive all the time, her and Quinn could sing some  _killer_  harmonies; and if Puck and Kurt weren't both so damn stubborn they might actually--  
  
"Finn?"  
  
Finn jumps, whipping obediently around like his school pecking-order conditioning has taught him.  
  
Kurt’s gazing back at him, a little curl at the corner of his mouth that might be a smile.  
  
"I needed to ask you something."  
  
Oh, right. Finn had nearly forgotten their almost-conversation from earlier. He's not sure Kurt Hummel's ever asked a question in his direction before, and he feels his eyes double in size as he watches Puck's boyfriend slips the sunglasses down the bridge of his nose.  
  
"Um... I... Sure." Finn stammers in reply "but I don't..."  
  
"Steady cowboy..." Kurt chides softly, and Finn twitches at the feel of the other boy’s fingers straightening the collar of his shirt, brushing softly against his torso: "I'm not going to ask you to bend over."  
  
Despite himself, Finn flushes, shuffling awkwardly back out of Kurt's grasp.  
  
Kurt drops his hand back to his side and for one very lucid moment, Finn suddenly realises that, for all Kurt's tolerated him, they're not friends. Not even slightly.  
  
“Ok. Um. What… What can I do for you?”  
  
Very slowly, a completely un-amused smirk cracks Kurt's face:  
  
"I need a favour..."  
  
*  
  
“Stormed out, you say?”  
  
Sue taps thoughtfully at her chin with the lid-end of her ballpoint.  
  
“Like some cable-knit Hurricane Katrina.” Santana confirms, grunting her way through her twenty-sixth stomach curl.  
  
“Finn says she does it all the time.” Quinn seconds breathlessly, shaking a stray blonde tendril out of her face. Sue makes a mental note: re-order those painfully tight hair-bands from Shenyang—superb for both impeccably constrained ponytails and restricting the growth of tiny Chinese baby feet.  
  
“I don’t know why Mr Schuester still allows her to perform; the girl needs a complete attitude  _overhaul_ …Oh.”  
  
Off Sue’s raised eyebrow, Quinn cuts the grumbling and resumes her ab-crunches, grimacing as she reaches forty-three:  
  
“It’s like everything you said Coach Sylvester: the stress is too much for them—glee club is pulling apart at the seams.”  
  
Sue smiles beatifically to herself. She doesn’t like to gloat—of course, it’s uncouth in someone as noble and accomplished as herself. But even she has to admit: every part of this plan points towards  _outstanding_  success.  
  
“So. New Directions are splitting apart like a hobo’s favourite pair of Y-fronts.” She surmises musingly. She tugs her reading glasses from her nose, crossing her arms and leaning across her desk to gaze at her three breathless minions:  
  
“What do we need to do to pop that last seam?”  
  
”Velcro is really easy to get out of.” Brittany interjects sagely. She’s already completed her stomach curls, and is preoccupied sorting Sue’s board markers into contented, multi-ethnic family groups. She wiggles her feet. “Mom put some on my sneakers. And my bathing suit…”  
  
“—Take out Rachel Berry.” Santana translates, gazing fondly at her friend. “Give fuzzy little GooseBerry the heave-ho and the whole tower goes ker-plunk.” She grins hungrily, teeth glinting like an iguana’s.  
  
Hmm. Sue leans back again in her chair, glancing ponderously at Q’s suddenly eager, twisted little face.  
  
Get rid of Rachel Berry.  
  
Well. Toppling the glee club might be even easier than she’d thought.  
  
*  
  
“Six games. And our former kicker, Mr Lagenthal, is zero for twelve in field goal attempts. As most of you statistically-minded people know: THAT SUCKS!!”  
  
Puck scuffs at the ground with his toes, ashamed and angry as Coach bawls them out yet again. He wasn’t surprised, showing up at practice today and Marcus Lagenthal nowhere to be found; but he hadn’t actually expected him to be recuperating in  _intensive therapy_ , like Tanaka’s just told them. Though, apparently, the ex-kicker still has a place on the team, if he wants it. Which is, y’know, charitable, and stuff.  
  
"…So. Mr Lagenthal will thusly be in charge of hydration services.” Tanaka’s concludes grimly, and smacks his hands together, staring round at the rest of the football team with white-faced unhappiness. “Today, however, we’ve got a more pressing problem for you Neanderthals to get to grips with. The next player who can get a ball between those two uprights—” He sweeps a finger down the length of the field, pointing at the goal post glimmering in the distance like the Holy Grail “—will be our new kicker.”  
  
There’s a second of brittle silence, as the team remember Tuesday’s confrontation, and Lagenthal trying to spike Coach’s head.  
  
"Excuse me." A new, unexpected voice interrupts, and Puck jerks his head up so fast he almost gets whiplash.  
  
Kurt props a hand on his hip and glances around at the scrum of football players shuffling away from him, obviously pleased at their sycophancy.  
  
He smiles at Tanaka:  
  
"My name's Kurt Hummel." He announces needlessly into the stunned silence. "And I'll be auditioning for the role of kicker."  
  
Puck stares.  
  
 _What?_  
  
Kurt’s eyes meet his for a just one sharp, electric second.  
  
Tanaka blanches like a man who's just heard his own death-sentence. Puck can see the sweat beading in the hairy little crevasse above his upper lip as he pauses one second too long and Kurt cocks his head enquiringly.  
  
"Uh... Of course, Mr Hummel, yeah we can do that..." The coach gestures anxiously towards Finn, who’s hovering awkwardly behind Kurt’s shoulder, and Puck remembers the two of them whispering like girls in the choir room yesterday afternoon, Kurt’s fingers tracing the buttons on Finn’s shirt, and narrows his eyes.  
  
“Oh you’re  _shitting_  me.” He objects flatly, and louder than he means to.  
  
"Mr Puckerman." Tanaka snarls back in warning, and this time Kurt lifts his chin and stares Puck straight in the eye as the coach leads him and Finn down to the forty yard line. Puck's heart starts thumping like crazy when he can't find any hint of humour in the other boy's expression.  
  
Mike nudges his elbow: "Did you put him up to this?" He asks in a whisper.  
  
"Yeah, we don't need glee kids to save our football team." Karofsky grumbles. But Puck just snorts; setting his jaw and glaring at his boyfriend.  
  
When he reaches the line, Kurt turns, and Puck thinks for one whole, stupidly hopeful second that he's gonna walk away. He's gonna walk away and realise football is for morons and he should leave it to the jocks.  
  
But he doesn't. Instead, as Puck watches, he sets his hips; he plants his feet into the ground; he lifts his hands above his head and he waits.  
  
In the silence, Puck passes his tongue over his lips.  
  
 _Boyfriend_. What a stupid term. They're not even friends, not really. Puck wonders if Kurt's ever had any actual friends. And  _he looks stupid in a football helmet_  the little voice in his head adds spitefully.  
  
Then the music starts. And Puck's jaw drops open.  
  
 _"I’m up on him, he up on me, don't pay him any attention..."_  
  
Because Kurt starts  _dancing_. Dancing, bopping his head and swaying his hips to the peppy, synthesised rhythm like he’s incapable of doing anything that isn’t set to a soundtrack.  
  
 _”Cos if you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it...”_  
  
 _He’s_  auditioning  _for the role of kicker_  Puck realises dully.  
  
Whatever he’s doing, he’s certainly giving it his all. Football helmets aren’t real delicate, but somehow Kurt still manages to look poised and perfect in his makeshift training outfit, busting his moves all the way down to the thirty yard line. Puck’s reminded in nauseous flashes of all the afternoons he spent during those horrific/glorious two weeks they were fake-dating, him sprawled across Kurt’s sofa with the other boy practicing port de bras and arabesques and other dance moves with fancy French names that made Puck squirm and clutch throw-pillows awkwardly across his lap.  
  
'Cos he couldn't just  _kick_  it, like any normal football player; like any other loser, Puck reminds himself— 'cos he's Kurt fucking Hummel, and if something's worth doing it's worth doing coated in sequins with freaking bells on top.  
  
Puck digs his nails hard into his arms, but gets no comfort from the sting. His eyes remain fixed on Kurt's lithe, mobile body as he turns-- with a flourish and a smack of his ass-- to fix his attention on the football.  
  
 _”Don’t be mad once you see that he want it…”_  
  
 _Real subtle song choice Hummel_. Puck fights the scowl dragging at his mouth as the team start to straighten up around him, leaning past each other, shielding their eyes to get a better view as they realise what Puck’s already guessed, staring into Kurt’s eyes:  
  
He'll score it. He knows he can score it.  
  
 _He wants to show us how easy it is._  
  
Flawlessly, like Beyonce herself had choreographed it, Kurt hop-skips one more time, takes a steadying step forward on his right and swings his left foot down, connecting squarely with the pigskin Finn obediently holds out for him.  
  
Puck squints against the sun, hand to his brow, heart thumping against his ribcage.  
  
He watches the ball sail through the air; and he watches it glide between those uprights, dead centre, like it was always meant to be there, like it took nothing to score that goal that the McKinley Titans have been striving to score since, like,  _the dawn of time_ , and winces as Coach Tanaka lets out an ear-splitting blast of disbelief on his whistle.  
  
It’s still rattling between Puck’s ears as he watches Kurt pull his helmet off, fastidiously rearranging his hair.  
  
"That was good, right?" Puck hears him drawl in Tanaka's direction, pushing the helmet into the coach's waiting hands.  
  
Coach nods feverishly, passing the helmet back to Finn and clamping one huge sweaty hand on Kurt's shoulder. Kurt does his best not to wince. Coach has that crazy intense look on his face that suggests he might murder someone with his whistle-strap:  
  
"Could you do that,” He pleads breathlessly “with the game in the line, and ten gorillas bearing down on you who want nothing more than the taste of your sweet Aphrodisian blood?"  
  
Kurt casts a wicked eye over the football team:  
  
“Sounds like fun."  
  
Coach beams, grabbing Kurt and pushing him in front of him. Puck snorts: the football team around him look awestruck to the point of brain-damage.  
  
"Gentlemen." Tanaka pronounces, looking stoned to the eyeballs at the ridiculous mind-fuck that's just occurred. "We've found ourselves a kicker!"  
  
Kurt wriggles his fingers gamely in the direction of the football team, carefully avoiding anything like eye-contact as he basks in their nervous adoration.  
  
Puck doesn't join their applause. He shifts his weight to his other hip, glaring after Kurt's languid figure as he starts to pick his way carefully back across the field to the locker rooms.  
  
He’s up to something. Puck doesn’t know what it is yet; but knowing Kurt, it definitely won’t be pretty.  
  
(Unlike Kurt’s ass in those sweats. Damn, but red is  _totally_  his colour).

 


	3. Chapter 3

Puck shoves the locker room door open with a shoulder, but catches it with his other hand before it swings shut again, letting it fall back quietly with a dull  _thump_.  
  
Kurt glances up from fixing his bangs, catching Puck’s gaze in the one mildewy mirror the guys’ locker-room can justify.  
He doesn’t look away, and Puck just shrugs, awkward with his pads on, and asks:  
  
“…What you playin’ at?”  
  
Kurt turns, still clutching his hairbrush like he’s not ready to fully commit to a conversation. He stares at Puck like  _he’s_  the one with bi-polar tendencies:  
  
“I’m sorry?”  
  
Puck smiles humourlessly, wrapping his arms over his chest.  
  
“You’re a footballer now?”  
  
“Not any more Lewis Carrol than you being a choirboy.” Kurt returns pointedly, bending down to replace his brush in what looks like some fancy hairdressing set, and Puck grimaces, surprised at how much Kurt’s casual dismissal makes his heart hurt. He’s built  _walls_  for this, dammit.  
  
But Kurt doesn’t seem to notice, only a tiny shadow creasing between his eyebrows as he continues packing his stuff into his messenger-bag:  
  
“I don’t see why you’re getting your lederhosen in such a knot. I heard you needed a new kicker, I thought I could help and— in case you didn’t notice—  _I scored your field-goal_ , which a certain large, gangly pigeon told me you  _professionals_  haven’t managed to do since Fred Flintstone last got his leg over—”  
  
“—Yeah, dancing to  _Shakira_!” Puck blurts, rolling his eyes “What the hell was that about?”  
  
Kurt scowls, looping his bag over his shoulder. He’s wearing a red and white sweater that matches perfectly with Puck’s practice uniform. The strap of his bag pulls the fabric away from the smooth, milky white curve of his neck.  
  
“It was Beyonce.” He retorts flatly; like it  _matters_.  
  
He makes a move to sweep past Puck to the door, but Puck side-steps, blocking him in.  
  
“Look: I know I’m too dumb to  _get_  what your sick little plans are,” He snaps, fists constricting as Kurt’s eyes flare open: “but can you just do me  _one_  favour?” He struggles to keep from growling as Kurt takes half a step back, and Puck recoils from the sudden whiff of spicy-lemony shower-gel in his nostrils. “Can you  _not_  screw this one up for me, ok? I’m not  _like you_  Kurt: I don’t get straight As; I don’t have half a dozen other extra-curriculars fawnin’ over me. I got  _football_. That’s it. And I need it to pass this semester, so whatever it is you’re tryin’a do, can you just  _leave me out of it_?”  
  
Puck exhales shakily, glowering at Kurt’s unmoved face: his eyes clear like those weird glass pebble things you get for the bottom of fish tanks but totally unreadable. Puck’s heart’s beating really fast and he doesn’t even know why. He hadn’t meant to say any of that.  
  
The door bangs open, and the rest of the team start trickling in, grumbling, laughing, shouting; heading for their lockers. Puck can feel their eyes on him and scratches angrily at the back of his neck, looking away, avoiding their gazes: he is  _so_  not having a domestic in the middle of the locker-room.  
  
Kurt’s eyes narrow. “Are you done?” He asks in an undertone, arching an eyebrow when Puck makes no reply; pulling the zipper a little further up his sweater:  
  
“Great. I’ve so missed our little conversations.”  
  
He starts once more towards the door; making a show of pausing in case Puck feels like body-blocking him again; but Puck just jerks away, squeezing his eyes shut against the feeling of his stomach deflating. Kurt yanks the door open, and Puck flinches as it smacks hard off the wall behind him.  
  
  
*  
  
  
 _“There’s only you tonight, what you are what you do, what you saaaaaayyyyy…”_  
  
Tina reaches out an imploring hand, grasping for the phantom of an absent Tony, a first taste of love: fleeting; desperate; all-consuming.  
  
The piano melody dances around her as she holds that note, listening closely to the reverberation of her voice around the auditorium’s shoddy 1970s acoustics.  
  
 _“Today, all day I had the feeling, a miracle would happen, I know now I was right…”_  
  
That descent needs to sound beautiful; flowing; like an unbound river coursing to the ocean.  
  
 _“For here you are, and what was just a world is a staaaaarrr, to-nigh—”_  
  
Tina clutches a hand against the sudden painful swoop in her stomach, voice breaking in her throat and flying off like shrapnel into some horrendous, grating C-sharp.  
  
 _Crap. Crap crap crap crap._  She instantly feels tears spring into her eyes, pressing her fist hard into her traitorous abdominals. Why can’t she  _get_  this??  
  
She clutches her other hand tight around the support of the ladder, steadying herself before she tumbles off in pure frustration. She sucks a breath in hard through her teeth. And another.  
  
“…Hey girl.”  
  
Tina startles, wrapping her arms around the ladder’s struts as it wobbles underneath her.  
  
“Artie.” She gasps, fighting back another unexpected bout of nausea— probably this time something to do with the vertigo. She shakes her hair out of her face. “H-how long have you been there?”  
  
Artie rolls himself forward. “That any way to greet your loverboy?” He asks, making a face as he squeaks to a stop under Tina’s perch. He peers up at her.  
  
“Hey. You’re up a ladder.”  
  
“Well noticed.” Tina returns, climbing gingerly down to meet him. (Why  _is_  Maria up a ladder anyway? There is no logic to this artistic direction…)  
  
“I could roll right under there. Hope you’ve got panties on.”  
  
“Artie.” Tina scolds.  
  
“Tina.” Artie sticks his tongue out; but there’s some softness in his eyes that Tina’s missed in the last few days. It calms her nerves slightly.  
  
He pats his knee and Tina easily slips into his lap, leaning in to peck him on the lips before she even really notices she’s doing it. Artie runs a hand down through her hair.  
  
“Why didn’ you just tell me you were rehearsing? I woulda got that.”  
  
Tina looks over his head. She’d blown off date night, it was true; but it’s not like Artie made such an effort every other week.  
  
“I wasn’t feeling great.” She explains softly, and it’s not really a lie. “I was just gonna go home… But Schue’s really at me to nail this solo…”  
  
“You sounded dope.” Artie offers, and Tina just narrows sarcastic eyes at him:  
  
“I was  _sharp_.”  
  
“On  _one_  note.” Artie protests, shrugging. “You’ll get it next…” He stops, eyes focusing over Tina’s arm towards their resident pianist, still waiting patiently on the piano-stool for Tina to resume.  
  
“Hey, Uh, Brad? D’ya mind giving us a…” Artie jerks his head pointedly towards the back of the stage, and Tina forces herself not to giggle at their accompanist’s blank-faced glower. But he goes without protest, scooping up the sheet music from the piano and stamping away in irritated staccato across the stage.  
  
“I found him wandering the corridors.” Tina divulges in a whisper, as she watches Brad vanish into the wings. “I don’t think he even goes home…”  
  
Artie breathes a laugh, squeezing his arms tighter around Tina’s middle, and Tina immediately stiffens, remembering the last time they were this close; all the words she let him say.  
  
Eventually, Artie clears his throat.  
  
“Listen.” He begins awkwardly, pressing the side of his face against Tina’s shoulder so she doesn’t have to look at him. She’s not very good with confrontation.  
  
“I know I wasn’t totes supportive when Schue gave you this solo. But y’know: you  _rock_  girl; and I am one hundred percent behind you nailing this like it’s the last nail hot chick at a frat party.”  
  
Tina narrows an eye: “Kind of offensive..?”  
  
“Sorry. Anyways: You’re an awesome Maria. Natalie Wood was only half-Jewish y’know. And I wanna be up there with you. We  _deserve_  to be at the front of the stage again, Tee… I wanna get me some spotlight.”  
  
Tina smiles, gazing out over the waves of identical empty seats swooping away and up into the shadows at the back of the auditorium:  
  
“…You can have it.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You heard Mr Schuester.” Tina traces her fingertip over the button on Artie’s cuff: “He only gave me this solo to screw with Rachel—”  
  
“—What, you kiddin’?” Artie looks up, forcing Tina to meet his eyes. He sounds appalled by the very idea, which is sweet of him. He can be very sweet, sometimes. “Hey, listen to me girl:” He continues, staring at Tina over the rim of his glasses and looking very much like a math teacher “if all he wanted to do was rile Rachel, he would’ve given it to Quinn Fabray.”  
  
Tina can’t help but snort, imagining how far Rachel’s eyes would’ve popped out of her head if Fabray had got first dibs on Maria. There would’ve probably been bloodshed.  
  
Artie looks relieved to see his girlfriend finally crack a smile. He leans in to touch their noses together:  
  
“There’s my sexy lady…”  
  
Tina feels her cheeks turn pink, but she doesn’t flinch from the feel of Artie’s lips on hers. Warmth floods her stomach as she  
kisses him back, tiny and soft and apologetic.  
  
Artie is first to pull away, hand stroking fondly through the back of Tina’s hair.  
  
“You’re  _good_ , Tee.” He reminds her, pressing their foreheads together.  
  
The corner of Tina’s mouth quirks:  
  
“About the solo though?”  
  
“ _And_  about the solo!” Artie confirms:  
  
 _“Tonight, tonight, it’s only you toniiiight!!”_  
  
“Artie!!!” Tina squeals, clutching her arms around Artie’s neck as he pushes his wheels in opposite directions, sending the wheelchair into vomit-inducing spirals.  
  
 _“What you are, what you doooo…!!”_  
  
“Artie! Stop!!” Tina buries her face in Artie’s neck, giggling with hot breath against his skin, laughing even more at the feel of his laughter vibrating through his chest.  
  
 _“What you saaaayyyy!!!”_  
  
“Artie!! Stop stop stop!!”  
  
At the sudden real urgency in her voice, Artie does as she asks, catching the wheels and jerking to a giggly halt, as Tina stares wide-eyed at a steady spot on the wall, sucking deep breaths through her lips, face suddenly white as a sheet.  
  
“Tee?” She feels Artie’s hand rubbing gingerly at her back. “You ok babe?”  
  
“Yeah… Yeah.” Tina squeezes her eyes shut, and when she opens them again the room has at least stopped blurring round the edges. “Sorry. I just…” She curls an apologetic arm over her stomach; grimaces: “…Crampy.”  
  
It does the job: Artie looks blankly horrified.  
  
“…Oh.” He says, with the nonchalant terror of any man faced with a menstrual crisis. “Uh…” Then he cocks his head just a tiny bit:  
  
“…Really—?”  
  
“—Yeah, sorry. Stupid. Girl things.” Tina assures him, pulling the hair back out of her face; fiddling with her highlights. Artie, against all the odds, takes the hint.  
  
“Ok, uh. No more questions.” He slaps his hands down on Tina’s knees. “So: do you wanna try this thing once more? Or do you wanna come back to mine and we can get all freaky with those two cray-cray friends of yours?”  
  
Tina gives him half a smile:  
  
“Sondheim and Bernstein?”  
  
“Ben and Jerry, yo!” Artie corrects, leaning in again and pressing a fond kiss to the curve of Tina’s nose.  
  
Tina chuckles, resting the side of her head against the top of his.  
  
“Can I try it one more time?” She asks tentatively. “It’s just, Mr Schue said he wanted  _actual_  tears—”  
  
“Say no more.” Artie raises a finger; leans over his shoulder:  
  
“ _…Brad_!!”  
  
  
*  
  
  
Puck stares around the locker-room, already feeling that familiar sense of foreboding wriggling in his stomach. He's freakin' best buds with his sense of foreboding at the moment. His sense of foreboding could have its own shirt number.  
  
The football team— minus one conspicuously missing soprano-turned-place-kicker— are crushed up onto two sweaty benches near the laundry hamper, grumbling and elbowing each other in the ribs as they pull their practice shirts on.  
  
Puck narrows his eyes:  
  
"What's goin' on?"  
  
Karofsky grunts, shoving Mike out the way so he can lace his cleats up.  
  
"Your boyfriend got his Judy Garland on and bullied Tanaka into giving him half the locker room."  
  
"Yeah; I bet coach’s testicles will look real nice nailed up next to yours on Hummel's bedroom wall, right Puckerman?"  
  
"At least I got some balls, Z." Puck snaps back, biting the inside of his cheek and dropping his bag with a clunk onto the floor.  
  
Everyone pauses as a tuneful, carefree song floats across to them from the other side of the lockers:  
  
 _“… start a fight, It's not worth the drama, for a beautiful liar…”_  
  
Puck glances at the ceiling.  
  
“Yeah, he needs his privacy.” Karofsky schools his face into something that almost resembles sincerity: “Y’know; ‘case ‘dumb’ is catching.”  
  
“Well it’s obviously not sexually transmitted—or you not got that far yet?” Azimio smirks, throwing his hands up when Puck starts for him:  
  
“— Ain’t me coach, he insulted my mother!”  
  
“She probably deserved it.” Tanaka shoots back, unconcerned, emerging from his office and brushing crumbs of burrito off his polo shirt. “Right, you pile of miscreants: in the choir room in five, full pads.”  
  
Puck blinks:  
  
“Say what?”  
  
“Choir room.” Kurt’s voice repeats smugly, and Puck lifts his head to find the other boy leaning against the bank of lockers, examining his fingernails. He blows carefully over the tips of them. “Don’t worry. Finn and Noah know the way. If you all hold hands you should make it.”  
  
“Mr Hummel here has a few ideas for getting you all back in fighting shape for next week’s game.” Tanaka explains, and Azimio snorts like he’s going to object; but Kurt freezes him with a death-glare.  
  
“—And since he’s the only one who’s come close to lookin’ impressive out there recently, I’m inclined to do whatever the hell he wants. So get up, get your pads on, and get your sorry asses into that music department.”  
  
There’s no point arguing, and Puck’s only a tiny bit triumphant when he skulks past Kurt’s impatient gaze and the other boy can’t quite look him in the eye.  
  
“Line up, that’s it; three rows, make sure you have space, we don’t need any… inappropriate touching.” Kurt smirks when they reach the choir room, directing football players into lines like a real-life game of foosball. Puck tries to hide at the back beside Finn— but no such luck:  
  
“Puckerman! Move forward, I can’t see you cowering behind Lance Bass here.”  
  
“It’s David.” Karofsky sulks as Puck elbows his way forward, and Kurt sniffs a condescending little laugh:  
  
“As if I care.”  
  
Eventually, satisfied, Kurt spins to face them, fixing his hands on his hips.  
  
“That’s  _perfect_. Now: in the few days since you all instated me as the newest member of you little… team,” Kurt wriggles his fingers, like the word freaks him out a bit. “I’ve observed that your greatest weakness out on the field isn’t really your lack of speed or power or technique; but actually a startling lack of confidence in the abilities of your own bodies.”  
  
Puck coughs in the back of his throat, looking at the floor so Kurt doesn’t realise he’s laughing. Lack of confidence? Wonder where that came from?  
  
Maybe Kurt notices anyway, ‘cos he pauses for a moment before continuing.  
  
“So; after discussions with your good Coach, He’s given me permission to try something a little bit different with you today to help… loosen you up a bit; get the blood flowing…”  
  
Puck crosses his arms. He has to make everything sound obscene, doesn’t he?  
  
“I’m going to teach you some dance moves.”  
  
Instantly, the shuffling, spell-bound huddle of footballers bursts into protest.  
  
“ _We_  can’t…  _dance_.” Puck hears Mike’s voice stammer over everyone else’s, pleading with Kurt’s stonily neutral expression.  
  
“You can  _try_.” The gleek returns, in a tone that instantly shuts the room up. One by one he meets the cow-eyed gazes of the ten football players arranged before him.  
  
“Dance is one of the most universally beneficial forms of exercise you can partake in.” He explains crisply, casting around as if for a big stick and looking mildly displeased when he can’t find one. “A properly executed ballet routine woks all the core muscle groups in your body, as well as honing balance, flexibility, control, breathing-technique— improving even one of which might go some way to helping you figure out how to pass a football without putting your spectators in  _mortal danger_.”  
  
Behind him, Puck hears Finn mumble: “That was  _one_  time…”  
  
“So.” Kurt claps his hands sharply, hitching his smile higher even though it’s starting to wear a bit at the corners. “If you gentlemen are all on-board, I thought we’d start with a popular little Beyonce number you might be familiar with…”  
  
Puck hardly believes what he’s seeing. Kurt snaps a finger down on the play-button of the CD-player propped on the piano behind him, and the music’s hardly started before the football team are shuffling their feet, staring avidly as Kurt leads them through the breakdown of the first verse, beads of nervous perspiration dripping down their faces.  
  
Is he honestly that good? Do they honestly not see it? That he’s just making them look like idiots? Puck frowns and glances at the ceiling. It wouldn’t surprise him if there were even cameras in here, recording them, so the gleeks can watch their pitiful efforts on playback with smirks and glasses of pink chianti.  
  
Whatever the fuck chianti is.  
  
“—Finn, Finn, no—!”!  
  
There’s a crash from behind him, and Puck sighs as he turns to find Finn sheepishly rubbing his knee while Matt tries to disentangle himself from a music stand and climb back to his feet.  
  
“Sorry,” The quarterback mumbles. “I didn’t… Sorry…”  
  
Kurt folds an arm across his chest, using his other hand to replace some stray hair behind his sweat-band. He jerks his head and Finn obediently lumbers forward to the front of the class.  
  
“Thankyou.” Kurt tells him softly. “Ok, let’s… Try again. Just the same except, y’know… Good. Or something.”  
  
The music starts again and this time, Puck tries to at least move his feet in the same direction as everyone else, hoping that Finn’s Bigfoot-like form might block him from view.  
  
They look like  _freaks_. This is a  _girl’s song_ ; it’s called  _‘Single Ladies’_. for crying out loud Kurt might be able to pull-off petite and elegant, but there’s no-one else in this room under a hundred kilos, and anyway, isn’t football meant to be about tackling the crap out of each other?  
  
Puck realises he’s out of time and trips a bit trying to swap back to the right foot. He glances up; catches Kurt watching him with absolutely no mocking in his face and blushes furiously, instantly grinding to a halt. Dammit. What’s the point anyway? He’s a running back. All he has to do is run, and fuck it if Puck hasn’t at least got  _that_  down after ten years in the public school system.  
  
He snorts, but looks up again as his light is suddenly blocked from view:  
  
Kurt’s standing in front of him, brushing the hair off his forehead:  
  
"You're not dancing." He observes, eyes very blue against the pink of his cheeks.  
  
The rest of the team are still going, music running on cheerily through the first chorus.  
  
Puck glances down at his own (immobile) feet. Raises his eyebrows: "Guess not."  
  
"…Do you… know what you’re doing?"  
  
"I never know what I’m doing.” Puck returns bluntly. "I thought you’d got that."  
  
Kurt looks at him for a moment. Then, he sets his jaw, and walks away from Puck to go harass the defensive line, still struggling over their twist-heel twist-heels.  
  
"Everyone!” He hollers, voice razor-sharp around the edges. “Watch how Mike does it, it's  _perfect_ ; well, you know-- no technique or style or anything like that-- but he has the basic idea..."  
  
Puck watches him go, pout forming on his lips.  
  
It isn't like Kurt to walk away from a confrontation.  
  
He’s not sure why he’s annoyed at him for it.  
  
Carefully, as his boyfriend's busy with Mike Rutherford's step-changes, Puck peers around to check no-one's paying him attention and practices some surreptitious hip-circles. Instantly, it feels like every vertebrae in his spine clicks out of place.  
  
Damn dancing.  
  
It lasts the full forty minutes. Puck's kinda surprised: the chances of either him or Kurt storming out, or Finn breaking someone's face with a misplaced foot-flick, or Karofsky having some respiratory emergency seemed stupidly high when they got here. But, when Coach finally blows his whistle, the whole team look kinda traumatised yet weirdly pleased with themselves.  
  
After keeping schtum for the whole session, Tanaka strides pompously back to the front, lifting his hand like he’s gonna clap Kurt on the shoulder again and looking disgruntled when the boy slides neatly sideways to avoid him.  
  
“Uh, ’kay everyone:” He coughs “you wanna, uh, thank Mr Hummel for helping us out today—?”  
  
“—Coach, I’m sorry; I wasn’t quite finished.” Kurt interjects, raising a finger and stepping back into the centre of the room. Tanaka’s mouth gapes dumbly but Kurt pays him no attention.  
  
“For next week I’d like everyone to be able to dance the first verse, and the first repeat of the chorus.” He instructs, smiling beatifically like he’s informing them of world peace. Maybe it’s Puck’s imagination, but Kurt doesn’t seem to look his way at all. “Practice in your spare time—two hours a day is a minimum, and I  _will_  be able to tell who’s rehearsed and who’s not come next session.” Off the team’s blanched faces Kurt turns cheerfully back to Tanaka: “Well I think that’s it, don’t you?” He tugs the sweatband off his head with a flourish: “Class dismissed.”  
  
Kurt heads directly for the door and, after just a few seconds of exchanged glances, the rest of the team follow. Puck shakes his head. He wishes he took acid, ‘cos then all of this would make a lot more sense.  
  
“Puckerman.” Coach snaps, striding over to block him from leaving. Puck rolls his eyes; he knew this was coming. Coach is awful good at spring-boarding off other people’s authority.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Do what he says.”  
  
“I wasn’t  _not_  doing what he said.” Puck protests, pouting like an angry bear.  
  
“Don’t backtalk me.” Coach stabs a finger in Puck’s chest. “You keep your frilly little personal life outta my practices, ok? If your attitude loses me my kicker, it’ll be your ass flying over that crossbar.”  
  
Puck glowers, watching Tanaka as he lurches out, angry like an obese pitbull. Yeah, ok, he gets why the team are quite happy to stare and preen and kow-tow to Kurt’s demands— he totally does, he’s been doing that for longer than any of them, and even when he’s mad at him there’s like eighty percent of Puck’s brain that concerned primarily with memorising every single sexy little move that Kurt makes. But: the teachers too? They’re meant to neutral, right?  
  
Puck runs a hand back over his mohwak. It comes away damp and he wonders why the hell he was even trying hard enough to break a sweat.  
  
When he gets back to the locker-room, most everyone else is already gone. He takes his time getting changed, enjoying the hot throb of the shower against his shoulders; the weird comfort in the smell of stale laundry and the leftovers of eleven different body sprays. As he pulls his jeans back on, he resigns himself to murmuring that damn West Side Story song, in the off-chance it might get freakin’ ‘Single Ladies’ out of his head.  
  
He thinks he might even make it to the end of the school day without pounding his fist off the wall, right up until the moment he pushes the door open and steps out into the hallway.  
  
“Puck.”  
  
A pale hand curls around Puck’s wrist and, against all logic, Puck lets himself be stopped. Kurt’s fingers are warm against his skin. Despite everything, the reality of Kurt Hummel touching him voluntarily still makes Puck’s blood fizz.  
  
For a minute they just stare at each other, and eventually Kurt heaves a sigh:  
  
“I don’t see why you care so much.” He says, pulling his hand awkwardly back to himself. “It’s  _football_.”  
  
Puck looks at him; rolls his lips together, and Kurt narrows his eyes:  
  
“…What?”  
  
“Nuthin.” Puck shakes his head to clear the sudden fogginess, shrugging his backpack further up his shoulder. “Just… That’s the first time you’ve called me that.” He realises, and heads off towards the parking lot before his brain figures out what to do with that information.  
  
  
*  
  
  
“Yo.” Puck calls as he kicks his sneakers off, trailing through the front room and finding Sarah sprawled out as usual on the recliner, eyes fixed on the tv.  
  
“Yo, dickface.” She returns, grinning at the forbidden pleasure of a swear-word.  
  
“Who you calling dickface, cumbucket?” Puck returns, depositing his rucksack on his sister’s lap and making her shriek with indignance.  
  
“Noah, get your smelly shit off me!  _Noah_!” She shrieks again as Puck perches himself on the arm of her chair, slipping nonchalantly down till Sarah’s crammed right up into one corner of it, digging her toes into his diaphragm.  
  
“Noah, you’re such a  _moron_.” She tells him, wriggling till they both get comfortable, and the recliner gives an ominous cracking noise.  
  
“Guess mom’s not about then?” Puck asks, snatching the remote from where it had fallen on the floor.  
  
“Upstairs.” Sarah corrects him sulkily. “—Don’t change that, I was watching that!”  
  
Ke$ha’s writhing about the floor covered in body-glitter, miming one of her whiny come-fuck-me autotune numbers.  
  
Sarah obviously notices him looking; pokes him in the ribs:  
  
“Don’t you think she looks hot?”  
  
Puck snorts, flipping the channel to something a bit more  _rock_. “Nah, she looks pretty chilly rolling ‘bout there in her underwear.”  
  
Sarah makes a half-hearted attempt to snatch the remote back:  
  
“Mom said she’d get  _me_  dance-classes.” She divulges smugly and it’s Puck’s turn to make a face:  
  
“Like hell. Anyways, don’t you do that bendy shit in cheerleading?”  
  
“It’s not the same…”  
  
Doesn’t Puck know it. He lifts his eyes away from the telly at the sound of his mom thundering down the stairs, late, as usual.  
“Noah!” She snaps, noticing his shoes before she notices him. “Do you have my lighter?”  
  
He might do.  
  
“Nah, haven’t seen it…” He lies. “Hey, you got something in for dinner?”  
  
“What?” His mom yells, cantering into the kitchen. Puck hears the sound of the drawers being yanked opened and slammed shut again.  
  
He sighs, levering himself painfully out of the recliner and following her to the kitchen, flipping the bird to his smug-ass little sister as he goes.  
  
“You got something in the freezer?” He repeats bluntly, shoving his hands in his pockets and wondering if she’ll even make eye-contact with him before she disappears for another twelve hours.  
  
His mom wraps an arm around his neck, leaning up to peck him a quick greeting on the cheek:  
  
“Not time today, but I called Pizza Express. You liked the Barbeque, right?”  
  
“Sure ma…” Puck replies neutrally, as his mom downs the remains of a mug of coffee that’s been sitting there long enough to leave a ring of grounds around the inside. He leans back against the counter, fighting his usual battle to say it or not say it:  
  
“…He’s not paid it, has he?”  
  
Hi mom snickers unhappily, checking her hair in the mirror on the window-ledge. “Said something about spending it on alcohol, but what the hell does he expect me to spend it on working these shifts?” She adds something else under her breath; something that kinda sounds just like that brand new swear-word she yelled Sarah out for the other weekend.  
  
Puck swallows back some choice words of his own, turning round instead to bend down and yank open the dishwasher. The plates are slick with watery orange grease. Great. Someone forgot to switch it on for the last load.  
  
Puck grabs a handful of cutlery and slams the appliance closed again, stabbing the on button as his mother rests her hand briefly on his shoulder. She’s a good five inches shorter than him now. He remembers looking at his mom when he was a kid and thinking she was the tallest, prettiest, most wonderful lady he knew.  
  
“Use the good plates tonight, huh?” She suggests, in a much softer voice than before.  
  
Puck looks at her and she shrugs, eyes big, dark pools of chocolate just like Sarah’s.  
  
“Sure, whatever.” He sighs in reply, turning on the tap and running his handful of forks under the screaming jet of water.  
  
There’s a few minutes of jagged silence as his mom bustles about, reclaiming the contents of her handbag from wherever she’d abandoned them around the kitchen; fixing her earrings; pushing her feet into pumps, then boots, then changing her mind and pumps again.  
  
“Hey mom?”  
  
“Mmm? What Noah, I need to go—”  
  
“—Just: I got a game next week.”  
  
“A game of what?”  
  
Puck pushes the tap off again, shaking his wet hands over the sink.  
  
“Monopoly.” He snarks back.  _What does she think he does with his time?_  
  
“Noah, you’re not actually that funny sunshine.” His mom shoots back.  
  
“ _Football_ , Ma, what did you think?”  
  
His mom doesn’t seem to get the significance:  
  
“That’s great honey.”  
  
She’s halfway out the door. This probably wasn’t the time to bring it up. Puck turns the dishtowel over in his hands.  
  
“Just figured, you know, you might wanna come?”  _For once_ , he adds silently.  
  
“Noah, you know I can’t take time off in the evenings.”  
  
“Sarah said you were gonna start her at dance classes.”  
  
His mom gives him the side-eye: “No need to be a smart-ass Noah Puckerman.”  
  
Puck sighs heavily: “Fine, ok, I was just sayin’…”  
  
The doorbell dings, and his mom startles, grasping for the latch. “That’ll be Ian… Why is  _this_  game so important? You never let us go to your games; I thought you were ashamed of us—”  
  
“— _Mom…_ ” Puck rolls his eyes, not even bothering to wonder how she knows the pizza guy’s name. He takes the pie as she passes it back, mouth watering at the smell of hot, spicy, cheesy goodness even despite his mood. All that prancing about earlier has totally worked up an appetite. He tugs a piece off the crust and pops it in his mouth:  
  
“Don’t be stupid. It’s just… It’s a big game.” He explains through a faceful of dough and garlic. “…I think we’re gonna win it.”  
  
“Noah, I’ve got to go—”  
  
“— I can get tickets. Bring Sarah, whatever. It’d just…” He sticks the pizza down on the counter; licks sauce off his thumb. “It’d be cool.”  
  
His mom looks at him, propping the door open with her toe. Puck notices one of her earrings is already dangling halfway out of her ear.  
  
“Next Wednesday?” She asks, after a minute’s scrutinizing.  
  
“Thursday.” Puck corrects.  
  
His mom nods: “Well, we’ll see… Oh  _shit_ …” She catches her earring as it drops out of her ear, fiddling around till she pushes it back in.  
  
“Right, make sure Sarah eats that— she’s been staring at an awful lot of pictures of that skinny Kardashian girl with the breasts. And  _don’t_  let her watch CSI!—”  
  
“—Right, ma!” Puck shouts back, as the door bangs shut behind her.  
  
Sarah comes trotting through as soon as she hears the car start, and immediately begins inspecting the pizza.  
  
“Eugh, does it have  _peppers_  on? She knows I hate peppers—”  
  
Puck elbows her out of the way, grinning as she shrieks and tries to pinch him back.  
  
“You can pick them off, dingbat.” He tells her, catching her skinny little body and holding her in a giggly, wriggly headlock till he finishes slicing.  
  
K$sha’s been replaced by Justin Beiber by the time they get back in the living room, which kind of makes Puck wanna rip his own ears off. But it does give him an idea of an evening’s entertainment if he’s gonna be stuck in the house with his bratty little sister.  
  
“Hey.” He says, picking a green pepper from Sarah’s neat little reject pile. “You know that Beyonce song? The ‘Single Ladies’ one?”  
  
Sarah swallows down a greasy mouthful: “ _Yes_. I love Beyonce, she’s so awesome.”  
  
Puck smirks: “Well; you wanna learn the dance to  _that_?”  
  
  
*  
  
  
“Coach Sue asked me to give you this.”  
  
Will narrows his eyes suspiciously at the proffered carry-out box of donut holes, adorned with a giant red ribbon, and the blonde, ditzy-looking cheerio holding it out to him. He thinks her name might be Barbie.  
  
“Sue?” He repeats incredulously. “...I suppose someone’s stuck it under a metal-detector?”  
  
Barbie shakes her head: “She wanted me to say ‘congratulations’.  
  
 _Congratulations_? Gingerly, Will takes the package, turning it slowly round in his hands.  
  
“... Mr Schuester... Are you having a baby?”  
  
 _What?_  Will opens his mouth to answer, but—thankfully—his cell phone starts ringing, giving him a reason to dump the package on top of the piano (much to Brad’s distress) and let Barbie skip gaily from the room, trailed by the rest of the weary New Directions.  
  
(He’s worked them hard today. They deserved it. There’s been far too little sweat slicking up the floor recently.)  
  
Cheered by the idea that it might be Emma calling, Will digs his phone out of his pocket; glances at the screen.  
  
It isn’t Emma.  
  
 _Dammit_. Will scowls at the treacherous little piece of technology, giving over to a moment of unhappiness. Then he notices: it isn’t a Lima number at all. Curious, he jabs the green button, pressing the phone to his ear:  
  
“You’re through to Will Schuester.”  
  
“Mr Schuester. Hi there, my name’s Jeff McKlung, I’m calling from WOHN-TV news studios.”  
  
 _WOHN. Television. Oh god she’s told them._  
  
“Mr McKlung, how amazing to talk to you…!” Will enthuses, snatching his sunglasses from the top of his head and replacing them on his face, instantly deflecting the curious glares of his embittered show-choristers. He searches the room for one face: Rachel Berry. Finds her; fixes her in the aim of one pointed index finger:  
  
“…But before this conversation goes any further let me just state for the record that any accusations of anti-Semitism are entirely untrue, and in fact every one of my students have very personal and fulfilling relationships with their local ACLU officers.”  
  
Rachel scrunches her pretty little face up, confusion turning to incredulity as Will turns his hand round and points to his own shaded eyes, then back at her again:  _I’m watching you_.  
  
“That…” McKlung sounds ever so slightly taken aback “…that’s good to hear Will— Can I call you Will?—“  
  
“—Of course you can, Jeff—”  
  
“— great Will, because actually, your exciting new methods of cutting discrimination out of high school extracurriculars are exactly what we here at WOHN wanted to talk to you about.”  
  
Will blinks:  
  
“...It is?”  
  
Jeff’s voice is warm and confident: “It is, Will. See, I have a daughter on the cheerleading squad there at McKinley, and she tells me a lot of the top athletes at the school are being invited to audition for the showchoir. I mean; wow! You've got to know how radical that is?"  
  
Will swallows hard, striding quickly back towards the reassuring interior of his office.  
  
"Well, that's what the arts always aim to be, Jeff." He blags, noticing with irritation that Mulan’s emo little sister seems to be hanging around, waiting for an audience. He jerks his head, gesturing at Tina to follow him. “Radical. Life-changing.” He folds himself into his chair, spinning halfway round to avoid the goth girl’s stony gaze. “Y'know, we in New Directions see these kids, these struggling, neglected kids— I mean, half of them don't even know their alphabet; just this morning I was teaching one of our girls the difference between a ‘n’ and an ‘m’— and we say,  _no_ : that's not ok. We know how empowering the arts can be; and so we invite them to join us, these  _social outcasts_ , and we make their lives better."  
  
"That's… That's perfect Will. That's all perfect. Look: we love what you're doing; what you and your kids are doing. I've got a tip-off from a contact of mine that you guys are gonna be big news before the year's out and we at WOHN think you are exactly the right guy to fill an upcoming space on our programme."  
  
"...Really?"  
  
"Yup: we wanna offer you your very own slot on the show. We were thinking: 'Schue's corner'."  
  
Will’s eyes widen, and he brings his thumbnail dazedly up to his mouth, chewing on it even as his mind instantly begins to chew over the possibilities.  
  
Jeff gives a smug little chuckle:  
  
"... It's a got a ring to it, right? Look: think it over, talk to the missus, whatever: then give me a call, ok, and we can talk money; and we can talk advertising; we can talk guest stars."  
  
"Guest stars?" Will repeats dumbly.  
  
“Guest stars. Look, like I said: think it over. Then give me a call and we can make you Western Ohio’s biggest celebrity educator.”  
  
 _Biggest celebrity educator_.  
  
“Sounds amazing Jeff,” Will grins hugely, making Tina take a nervous step backwards away from his desk.  
  
“Remember, it’s all about opportunities, Will. Take ‘em while you have ‘em.”  
  
“I fully intend to.”  
  
"Well, be in touch. Great speaking to you Will. Thanks for your time.”  
  
“No, thank _you_  Jeff. Ok. Speak soon. Bye now.”  
  
 _Biggest celebrity educator.  
  
Celebrity educator.  
  
Biggest celebrity._  
  
“Mr Schuester?”  
  
Will inhales sharply, slamming his phone down on his desk. “What do you want, Tina?” He grates, scowling as his fluffy-happy-dreamtime is interrupted by yet another moaning bag of hormones and vocal chords.  
  
The girl’s black lacquered fingernails dig tighter into the strap of her bag, but her expression doesn’t flicker.  
  
“Mr Schuester.” She repeats, very evenly. “You need to give this song to Rachel.”  
  
Will stares at her. He’s still slightly distracted by the images of red-carpets and flashbulbs and one-time rendezvous with Scarlett Johnasson exploding around his brain, but even through all that the irregularity grates: a team-member  _giving back_  a solo?  
  
Off his silence, Tina presses her lips together:  
  
“She’ll quit the club if you don’t.”  
  
“She wouldn’t dare.” Will argues, leaning back in his chair, picking a pen to twirl intimidatingly between his fingers. “Do you have some kind of intelligence--?”  
  
“—You only gave me this song to piss her off.” Tina reminds him. “Rachel’s a much better singer than I am. Our next invitational might be our last chance to recruit new members before Sectionals— we can’t screw it up.”  
  
Will shrugs: “Then  _don’t_  screw it up.”  
  
Tina lifts her chin. She rarely shows any emotion in class; any preferences; any likes or dislikes; any opinion. She leaves all the talking to her boyfriend, who for the love of Moses could do with learning to keep his mouth shut. But for some reason, right now, on this, she looks immovable.  
  
They stare at each other for a long moment, until eventually Tina offers a tiny, grim little smile:  
  
“She’s a much better singer than me. Let Rachel have the solo. Let’s take one for the team.”


	4. Chapter 4

They're late. Fashionably late, and… purposefully late. After all, they don't want anyone to actually  _see_  them here.  
  
"Thanks." Mercedes smiles tightly, pulling her scarf up to her nose and climbing into the space the three wide-eyed science nerds have just scrambled sideways to leave for her. Ugh, bleachers. It’s like the world’s biggest McDonalds. And can everyone just stop  _staring_?  
  
"How do I know when we’re winning?" Tina asks, sidling in beside her.  
  
"Just cheer when everyone else cheers." Mercedes advises.  _Damn_  it's cold.  
  
She reaches up on her tiptoes, scanning the red jerseys lumbering up and down the field for any sign of a player under five ten.  
  
“Look, there he is…!” She grins, waving to try and catch Kurt’s attention, and accidentally elbowing Tina in the boob with her enthusiasm:  
  
“— _Ow_!”  
  
Kurt glances up; but as soon as his eyes meet Mercedes’, what little colour there is in his china-doll cheeks drains away and he whips back round, resuming what looks like some pretty arbitrary hamstring stretches.  
  
Mercedes scowls: “Oh, as if he has anything to be proud about.” She grumbles. “He's wearing  _stirrup pants_."  
  
But Tina looks preoccupied by the accidental boob-barge, and doesn’t seem to care that Kurt is completely blanking their social-kamikazeing.  
"We're the Titans, right?" She says flatly, sitting down carefully on the stained white plastic beneath them. A bit sheepishly, Mercedes follows suit.  
  
 _“Go McKinley, go, go McKinley!”_  
  
Mercedes grimaces, glancing down at the cluster of goose-pimpled cheerleaders below.  
  
She really doesn’t  _get_  how this has happened. A couple of weeks back, she’d sat with Kurt and congratulated him over two decaf sugarfree hazelnut mochas on his imminent freedom from the attentions of that steroid-enhanced pre-historic loser Puckerman; and now here he is (and here she is!) voluntarily  _participating_  in some mid-season  _sporting-event_! And for what?  
  
Tina presses against Mercedes’ side, mouth puckering into a thin blood-red line of lip-gloss as she tries to make sense of the sporting carnage playing out below them.  
  
It’s gonna be a  _loooong_  night.  
  
  
  
“Hey, ball-buster—!”  
  
Puck bites his tongue, staring at the halfway point on the crossbar sixty yards away and trying to tune out the dickhead linebacker yammering  
for his attention the other side of the scrimmage.  
  
“—Yo momma so fat, her neck looks like a pack o hotdogs! Mmm,  _get me some ketchup_!”  
  
The Carmel Coyotes cackle; but Puck just introduces them to Exhibit A), his middle finger, and takes his place in the line. He exchanges a tiny nod with Finn: getting wound-up by these douche-nozzles ain’t gonna help nothing.  
  
“Blue twenty-two! Blue twenty-two!...HUT!!”  
  
Puck’s feet pound the grass, studs ripping at the turf as he runs, fire ripping through his quadriceps; grunting, yelling, chanting; the whistle screams:  
  
PHWEEEETTT!!  
  
“Set, thirty-six, HUT! HUT!”  
  
Carmel’s Ninety-Nine barrels up the field, throwing the McKinley line aside like rags; and Puck’s brain rattles against his skull as Karofsky’s body crashes into his, the ball rolling away from his outstretched fingers like a sheepish hedgehog.  
  
PHWEEEETTT!!  
  
“White eighty-four! White Eighty-four!...HUT!”  
  
Finn snatches the ball, tossing it back close enough to clock Matt in the groin and sending him to the floor:  
  
PHWEEEETTT!!  
  
“Blue sixty-two! Blue sixty-two, set, HUT!”  
  
“It’s mine! Here,  _here_  you fucker!” Puck’s shoulder impacts the turf, curling the solid ball of pigskin into his stomach as he’s pounded into the ground, body after body piling on top of his:  
  
PHWEEEETTT!!!  
  
The damp grass feels fucking beautiful pressed into his cheek: welcoming him to just stay for a while; lay his big, stupid, helmeted head down on the ransacked turf and hang ten… Or twenty…Fifty…  
  
He forces his eyes open. From the very, very corner of them he can see Kurt’s left calf, crossed tightly over his right, and his fingers, cold and white, knitted together over his knees.  
  
Humiliation pricking his shoulders, Puck finally works his arms, pushing himself back to his feet. Every night this week,  _every freakin’ night_  practicing that damn dance routine, ‘cos Kurt— his Kurt, who he hates to death and loves to pieces— stood up at the front in practice with a straight face and told them it would help.  
  
Puck pushes his fist against his mouth, teeth digging at his skin.  
  
 _I’ll never stop falling for it, will I? Play me whatever tune you like Hummel..._  
  
He glowers round at the rest of the field, ignoring the Titans slapping him comiseratingly on the shoulder as they file past. The only good that dance routine could do them now would be if they busted it out in the middle of the scrimmage and hoped to hell the other team would stay concussed long enough to give them a head start to the endzone.  
  
Puck sucks in a sudden, shuddering breath, heart leaping terrifyingly up his throat before settling back down again.  
  
He squints once more at the dejected huddle of Titans dragging themselves towards the sidelines; feels a horrified grimace flit over his mouth.  
  
 _Well shit…_  
  
PHWEEEETTT!!!  
  
“TIMEOUT!”  
  
  
  
By the end of the third quarter, most of the crowd in the McKinley stand seems to have dispersed and wandered inconspicuously towards the parking lot, or the porta-johns. Total humiliation isn’t that easy to take on the chin, even for those die-hard Titans fans, who were pretty used to watching Hudson get his plays mixed up as he called them, leaving his team standing in clueless disarray; or Karofsky getting all touchy about the opposing wing-backer pretending to ass-fuck him; or Chang dodging out of the way when one his team-mates remembered he was actually on the field and trying to pass him the ball. The Titanites knew their team wasn’t gonna get any  _better_  watching their fans abandon ship and head to the Lima Bean: but, honestly? It’s not like they could get any  _worse_.  
  
Mercedes snorts awake as Tina returns from her twenty minute pee-break, holding a hand up to her eyes and squinting across the field at the scoreboard.  
  
"...So I guess that’s what losing looks like."  
  
Mercedes rolls her head, trying fruitlessly to get the crick out of her neck.  
  
"And we’re letting these guys in our glee club?” She makes an effort to prise her eyes open, doing a quick scan of all the red-clad players currently bumbling around the field, and the one she actually came to see, still sitting primly on the sidelines. She feels her mouth pinch in unhappiness: “...Maybe after this BP-sized industrial  _disaster_  he’ll hang up his football boots and get on with breaking in his Gucinaris…"  
  
Tina latches onto Mercedes’ arm, smiling one of her incomprehensible smiles:  
  
“...So, own up: You’ve never even thought about it?"  
  
"About what?"  
  
"Slumming it. Dating a football player."  
  
"Psch. Scuse me while I choke on my own vomit."  
  
Tina shrugs: “Kurt’s a football player now.”  
  
Mercedes cocks an eyebrow:  
  
“Watch it, Yenta.”  
  
"Well they are  _pretty_.” Tina wheedles smilingly. “Sometimes you don't want something... complicated."  
  
"Are you serious?” Mercedes drawls, starting to get a bit suspicious of her friend’s insistence. “Nah, I'm sorry, I like my men to have a bit o meat between the ears, not just between the—"  
  
"—thighs?"  
  
The two girls burst out laughing, putting the middle-schoolers on Tina's other side to shame. Luckily, it’s swallowed up by the tentative hollering of the remaining crowd, as one of the bulbous Weebles on the field makes a break up the outside. After a few dramatic seconds though, the fullback (predictably) hits a hump on the perfectly flat playing field and crashes headfirst into the turf, causing a four man pile-up.  
Everyone settles down again, a bit embarrassed about their enthusiasm.  
  
Tina offers Mercedes an M&M, popping a green one in her own mouth, resuming their previous conversation.  
  
"Y'know, I heard Kurt and Puckerman haven't even done it yet."  
  
"Right.” Mercedes sniffs. “And Rachel Berry hasn’t started writing her autobiography...”  
  
  
  
Kurt bounces his foot up and down, noticing from the corner of his eyes how much it’s annoying Player-seventeen-whatever-his-name-is sitting beside him. He pauses for a moment— and Player Seventeen closes his eyes with undisguised relief, which is all the more entertaining when Kurt re-crosses his legs and starts bouncing his other foot instead.  
  
 _Moron_.  
  
Internally, he gives himself a slap across the wrist. They’re all on the same team now—or at least, that’s what this hideous and ill-fitting ensemble is forcibly reminding him everytime he has to jiggle his foot about to re-adjust the elastic straps under his arch. He’s meant to be  _civil_ , and  _supportive_  and other small-minded things that Broadway starlets are not best known for.  
  
Kurt pouts a little, glancing down at his blue-tinged fingers.  
  
He is  _trying_. But he doesn’t belong on a football team. Every cell in his body knows this, and everyone else out on the field knows it too— all these pairs of eyes staring at him feel more like the murdering hordes of Mordor than any rapturous Broadway audience, and he bets to sweet Papa McQueen there won’t any standing ovations tonight.  
  
Carefully, Kurt lifts his eyes, trying to spot Noah without anyone else noticing. It’s hard to tell the players apart out here: they’re all pretty much equally inept. How can it be  _so difficult_  to catch a ball? Surely this is what they do all the practice for?  
  
A gruff voice comes from his side:  
  
“…This rate you’re not even gonna get your chance to swoop in and save the day.”  
  
Kurt stiffens:  
  
“I’m sorry; and what alternate universe is this that allows us to make eye-contact?” He enquires, nevertheless turning his head around and glowering at the foolish hulk of testosterone slumped beside him.  
  
Unexpectedly, the other boy doesn’t back down; just scowls more, and Kurt is surprised at how much he recognises the helpless anger in his face:  
  
“That was it, right? You were just gonna swan in here, win the game and prove there’s nothin’ that you glee kids can’t own our asses at? Well, how’s it feel to be a Lima Loser Hummel?”  
  
It’s like the nameless imbecile has kicked him in the solar-plexus, and Kurt can’t help how his lips part, indignance flaring:  
  
“I’m not a  _loser_.”  
  
Nameless-Seventeen shrugs: “You’re sure as hell not winning.”  
  
PHWWWEEETT!!!!!  
  
“—Seventeen, get your butt out there! And where the hell is the physio--?!”  
  
The brainless linebacker escapes Kurt’s wrath just in time, hauled to his feet by an apoplectic Tanaka, and replaced by a staggering Matt Rutherford, who looks like he’s run face-first into one of the uprights.  
  
Kurt presses his knuckles to his mouth, twisting back round and staring out over the field again until his gaze alights almost accidentally on Noah, watching him kick listlessly at the turf, gritting his teeth against the endless taunts of the opposing defensive line.  
  
Kurt can’t actually remember the last time he lost at something. It’s just never really been an acceptable option.  
  
Kurt Hummel  _is not_  a Lima loser. Kurt Hummel  _does not_  play for losing teams.  
  
His eyes tick upwards. On the Titans’ side the scorecard still reads a big fat zero.  
  
 _Dammit_.  
  
  
  
"So.” Mercedes says through a mouthful of M&Ms “You better have a darn good reason for giving back that solo...”  
  
It’s not the first time Mercedes has tried to broach this subject today, and Tina turns baleful eyes on her.  
  
"I couldn't sing it.” She says flatly “I sounded like a Furby."  
  
The other girl shrugs: "Artie said you were rockin it."  
  
"Well he is kind of biased."  
  
Mercedes snorts. Artie’s a decent enough guy, and yeah, gets extra kudos for having enough talent to negate the horrifying faux-pas he  
regularly makes on the wardrobe front— but Mercedes knows even Tina isn’t blind to what a misogynistic ass her boyfriend can be.  
  
"Yeah, 'cos Artie just throws round compliments like they're goin outta style.” She reminds her dryly. “…The guy who told you he didn't want you riding his thighs anymore in case you cut the circulation off to his  _paralysed legs_??"  
  
Tina glances at her ebony-coloured fingernails: "He didn't say it like that."  
  
"I'm not down with any guy whaling on a girl 'cos of her curves, Tee.” Mercedes reminds her. “’Specially you; hell knows you could do better than putting up with his shiz...”  
  
The referee’s whistle blasts again, and Mercedes automatically glances at the big neon clock flicking down to zero and realises with a jolt that it’s _stopped moving_.  
  
“Wait,” She curls urgent fingernails in Tina’s arm. “What’s goin’ on?”  
  
“Hudson called a time-out.” The other girl explains wearily, and Mercedes  _cannot believe that this is even legal_.  
  
“Are you freakin’ kidding me??” She spits, throwing her hands in the air, and Tina can’t understand why all of a sudden she cares so much:  
“There’s one second to go!  _One second_! Have you lost your crazy-ass minds??!”  
  
  
  
“What the  _hell_  Hudson—??”  
  
“—Kinda getting sick of prolonging the inevitable here—”  
  
“— Not all of us enjoy getting’ shafted as much as Puckerman here does, okay?—”  
  
“—Shut  _up_ , all of you!” Finn glares round at them. His face is pink, but he holds one hand up steady right in front of Azimio’s trash-talking mouth as that huge incriminating zero looms behind their heads: “Puck’s got an idea.”  
  
Puck meets his friend’s gaze. He can honestly not believe his brain is letting him do this.  
  
He passes a nervous tongue over his lips. The dozens of faces in the stands around them are blurring into one big acid-trip dream-sequence:  
  
“We, uh…” He girds himself. “We need to do the ‘Single Ladies’ thing.”  
  
“ _What_?”  
  
“You  _trippin_ ’ Puckerman??”  
  
“—You lost your mind?”  
  
Puck sets his jaw. “’Single Ladies’. Like in practice…” He stares round at them “Yeah, come on—”  
  
“— It was  _dance practice_  Puckerman.” Azimio snorts, looking horrified. “We can’t do that out here—”  
  
“—And why? Worried you’ll look like a moron?” Kurt wanders over from the AV desk, making sympathetic eyes. “Have you noticed your  
forehead-to-chin ratio recently? You already look like a moron.”  
  
“Yeah, but it’s easy for you, ain’t it Hummel?” Karofsky snarls, turning on him. “To get out there and bust your moves in front of a hundred people? You’ve been doing Beyonce choreography since you popped outta your mom’s flappers.”  
  
Kurt frowns, pointing at the frosty turf: “…You think there’s a hundred people here?”  
  
“ _Whatever_. This is  _football_ — it’s not about prancing around in leotards, it’s about cracking skulls, and I’m pretty sure Destiny’s Child don’t know a thing about leg tackles.”  
  
Finn glances over his shoulder: “Look, we don’t have time to—“  
  
“—No, no, Triceratops may have a point.” Kurt interrupts, folding his arms in contemplation. “My football knowledge is, yes, less than a week old. The reason for that being that my brain is bigger than my testicles; freely admitted. But what I  _do_  know about,  _David_ , is  _winning_ ; doing whatever it takes to stay on the top; and that sometimes you need to pull a trick or two outta the bag to get some blindsided douche to pay you attention.”  
  
Puck flinches, glancing at his boots: so that  _might’ve_  been directed at him…  
  
“Right, now: you have two options, as far as Puckerman and I can see it. You can get back in your line, call one of your ridiculously-named plays and get ten yards down the field before ploughing into a cheerleader, like has been happening for the last fifty-eight minutes; or you can bang that music on, give those Coyotes thirty seconds of eye-popping what-the-fuckery and high-tail it down the field past the endzone before they’ve even stopped singing the chorus.”  
  
A gust of dead silence follows this proclamation. Frustrated, Puck throws down his hands. Two weeks ago getting a verbal bitch-slap like that from Kurt Hummel would’ve had the whole team cowering at his feet. More and more it feels like this world has gone and got itself turned inside out in the wash:  
  
"What we got to lose?"  
  
 _“Go McKinley! Go go McKinley!!”_  
  
"This isn't Glee Club." Karofsky protests desperately.  
  
"Then be a coward and stay a loser." Puck snaps. His toes have had enough of standing about here bellyaching; at least dancing might warm him up. "We could end this game with the biggest comeback in football history; I’m gonna give it a shot."  
  
No-one else says anything. And with a jolt Puck realises that’s the closest they’re gonna get to an agreement.  
  
“Okay.” Finn clears his throat roughly, nodding at Puck as they tighten up the huddle. Puck lifts his eyes, and his heart squeezes painfully when he finds Kurt still watching him.  
  
“Here’s what we do…”  
  
  
  
“Let’s just go.” Sarah grumps, slurping down the last of her slushie with pointed finality. She’s  _so_  doesn’t want to be here anymore. High School football games are not as cool as Tasha made them out to be. And Noah is being a  _total_  freak. What did he, like,  _plan_  to make her look like a dork?  
  
“Wait, wait, wait—” Tasha tugs at Sarah’s hoodie, and Sarah would be really peed-off at her if there wasn’t all of a sudden a big, teeth-grinding shriek of feedback from the tanoy, and instead of the commentator’s suicidal mumblings there comes…  
  
 _”All the single ladies! all the single ladies...!”_  
  
“Oh. My. God…” Sarah intones, jaw dropping open and bouncing off her knees. “What are they  _doing_??”  
  
‘Cos the McKinley Titans are  _dancing_ — like,  _properly dancing_ — in the middle of the football field, to Top 20 Beyonce solo hit ’Single Ladies’.  
  
“No. Way.” Tasha’s eyes are about double the size of her Slushie cup.  
  
Sarah blinks,  _hard_ , pretty sure this must be some e-numbers hallucination or something. But no: when she opens her eyes again they’re still there, still dancing— and they must’ve practiced a bunch of times, ‘cos everyone’s getting the steps right. And Sarah’s knows the steps are right because…  
  
“… _That’s_  how he knew all the moves…”  
  
“…What?”  
  
Sarah buries a hand in her hair, trying not to make eye-contact with anyone who might know she’s Noah Puckerman’s sister. “Noah showed me all the steps to this the other night.”  
  
Tasha makes a face like  _oh my god_ : “Is he like trying to be  _gay_  or something?”  
  
“He said it was a glee club thing!”  
  
“Noah’s in  _glee club_??”  
  
Yeah. It sounded nutsy to Sarah too.  
  
 _“If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it…”_  
  
“Not until like last week…” She mutters, torn between staring at the eleven jocks shaking their moneymakers and hiding her face in shame. They _cannot_  be serious about this. If any other glee kids are here the whole football team’ll be eating garbage for a week.  
  
 _Step and step and hip to the left, head… Well hey, at least they’re good at it…_  
  
The rest of the crowd don’t seem to know what to do. Some of them are laughing;  _most_  of the Titans fans are laughing, probably figuring what the hell, they don’t really have much to lose. The crowd from Carmel couldn’t look more shocked if the Titans were busting out their moves  _nekkid_.  
  
Sarah giggles, then immediately clamps her hand over her mouth: “This is  _epic_...” She wrestles her phone out of her jeans pocket, flicking on the video camera, and Tasha bursts out into a peel of laughter.  
  
Then—just as suddenly as it started, the music cuts.  
  
Sarah straightens up: “…Wha—?”  
  
The next few seconds seem to play out in slow-motion. The Carmel coyotes are shaking their heads, like they’re trying to dislodge the tune; a couple of them are taking the piss and flapping their hands about; and on the McKinley line, the Center snaps the ball.  
  
Finn catches it.  
  
“Oh  _shit_.” Sarah hisses, scrambling to her feet. Tasha grabs her arm.  
  
Noah starts running. Sarah has never seen him run so fast, he is  _bolting_  up the field, and it’s like the Coyotes are on another planet—half of them don’t even seem to know the ball’s in play.  
  
Then they do. Then they really, really do. They start running; some of the massive guys on defense go hurtling up the field, but Noah’s smaller than them; and faster; and he’s got a  _massive_  head-start.  
  
“Oh god, C’MON NOAH!!!” Sarah screams, bouncing up and down. Tasha echoes her shout:  
  
“C’mon Noah!”  
  
The whole crowd starts screaming, yelling, stamping their feet; they cannot believe this is happening.  
  
(It  _is_  pretty fucked-up.)  
  
“C’MON NOAH!!!!”  
  
It’s like the ball was made for Noah’s hands: it slips out of the sky and into his waiting palms, and he hardly even slows down as he thunders towards the endzone. The Coyotes sound outraged; their players are running flat-out, all charging desperately up the field trying to block her brother’s breakout, but…  
  
“They’re not gonna make it!” Sarah shrieks. “They’re not gonna make it!! ‘C’MON NOAH, C’MON, C’MON—YEEEEESSS!!!!”  
  
Noah skids into the endzone, spiking the ball like he’s trying to blast a hole in the field two metres past the goal-line.  
  
“YEEEESSSS!!! HOLY FREAKIN’ MOSES YEEESSS!!!” Sarah wraps her arms around her best friend, the two of them dancing on the spot.  
“MY BROTHER’S A FUCKING HERO!!! THAT’S MY FUCKING BROTHER!!!” She gives Tasha a good shake, ‘case she wasn’t paying attention. “YEEEESSSSS!!!!!”  
  
“We’re tied!” Tasha yells, pointing a dramatic finger at the scoreboard, which they’ve kind of avoided looking at for the last hour. “We’re tied! We’re not gonna lose!!!”  
  
Sarah’s kinda dizzy from screaming so loud. Her brother is doing some douchbag victory-dance at the end of the field but she’ll let him away with it ‘cos he is a freaking  _hero_  and the Titans have just drawn a game in the last second  _by dancing to Beyonce_.  
  
“Oh my god they are INSANE!!!” She hollers, and Tasha bursts out laughing.  
  
  
  
Puck has never heard noise like this.  
  
The whole crowd is fucking  _screaming_. Not kinda embarrassedly, like they do at most games; not ‘cos they’re pissed. But because he just, y’know: sprouted wings and ran like freaking  _Hermes_  to the other end of the field and scored a touchdown after busting out a verse and a half of Beyonce choreography.  
  
They did it. They actually,  _actually_  fucking did it.  
  
Puck holds a hand up to his eyes, squinting through the floodlights at his celebrating teammates. He’s pretty sure he has a smile on his face that it could give small kids night terrors, but he doesn’t even care.  
  
Except…  
  
Except the game isn’t over.  
  
His stomach does some kind of Cirque De Soleil aerial somersault thing and lands heavily on top of his bladder.  
  
From the bench Kurt strides onto the field, jamming his helmet down immediately over his head like it’ll protect him from all the breathless disbelief ricocheting around. He doesn’t even make a fuss about his bangs.  
  
Puck swallows heavily.  
  
“Oh god, c’mon Kurt.” He mutters through his teeth.  
  
Kurt, for his part, couldn’t look less bothered— except Puck’s been paying Kurt Hummel an inordinate amount of attention for the last year and a half, and he knows exactly what nervous looks like on him. He watches as the other boy wordlessly hands Finn the tee, taking the few steps he needs to get a good run up and tugging reflexively on the hem of his shirt to straighten the creases out. The crowd has quietened; their giddiness being squashed by the weight of the moment.  
  
Puck sticks his thumb between his teeth, chewing unashamedly. They could win this thing. They could fucking  _win_  this.  
  
Kurt tilts his head a little to the side, tracing the perfect trajectory with his eyes; finding the spot on the ball he needs to hit to send that incongruous lump of pigskin soaring through the starry night and over the crossbar to totally unexpected, whacked-out victory.  
  
Then—as if he’s finally just acknowledged the crowd around him—he glances right and left, at all the dozens of wide-eyed faces; takes a deep, deep breath; then sticks his hand in the air and twirls his finger.  
  
 _“If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it…”_  
  
“Come on you fucker, come on…” Puck chants. “Come  _on_ …”  
  
Kurt picks up the choreography bang on queue:  _hand, hand, point to the finger, hip, head…_  
  
The rest of the team are deathly pale, girding everything to keep back the Carmel Coyotes who look too shellshocked to even try and defend.  
  
 _“Who-oh-oh, oh oh oh-oh, who-oh-oh…”_  
  
Kurt side-hops one way, then the other; then plants his right foot hard into the ground and swings his left, just like he did in that very first try-out.  
  
Maybe the music cuts— or maybe it’s just that Puck’s brain can’t focus on anything except Kurt’s foot connecting squarely with the ball with a hard, satisfying  _thump_ — but he’s pretty sure he stops breathing.  
  
Then, in a world soft and silent and cottony around the edges, he watches the football soar through the air and right over the centre of the crossbar; a perfect three-point conversion.  
  
The crowd goes insane.  
  
Once again, Puck starts running. His knees are burning and he thinks he screams obscenities the whole way to the other end of the field, but he couldn’t say for sure ‘cos his brain’s gone code red and flatlined. The world’s a blur of wide open mouths and flailing arms and red shirts and Kurt getting hoisted violently upwards onto the waiting shoulders of the rest of the McKinley Titans. Puck wants to drag him back down again, but instead he lets Finn wrap him in a massive bone-crunching head-lock and the two of them stare wonderingly round at the bleachers; at the dancing and the hugging and that big bastar,d of a scoreboard that now reads nine points to six and may as well just have a giant middle-finger waggling in the direction of the Carmel Coyotes’ team bus ‘cos those dickwads have just been right and fairly  _shafted_  by one hundred-and-twenty pound, fiercely-coordinated, ice-bitch Glee club soprano and his whole team of epic, fearless prancing daisies.  
  
Puck spins round as the team finally lowers their new crown prince of victory back down to the turf. He wants to say something hot and witty and awesome… But his heart’s thumping so hard in his throat he doesn’t think he could form words even if his dumb, stuttering Neanderthal brain wanted him to. Then Kurt’s eyes meet his, and it feels like the first time Puck’s ever actually seen them. They’re bright, bright blue and warm as fireflies.  
  
“ _I hate you._ ” Kurt mouths over the noise; but he’s beaming,  _glowing_ , happier than Puck thought his face could actually be, and Puck catches him up in his arms without a thought, grinning at the heart-thrilling surge of electricity between them that draws their lips together, at Kurt’s fingers curled around his face, the other boy kissing Puck hard and sure and laughing against his mouth, smudging the roar of the crowd and the hollering of their teammates and the shrieking of the Cheerios into just so much meaningless, fuzzy background noise.


	5. Chapter 5

“Hi.”  
  
Mike jumps like a mile in the air, instinctively brandishing his weapon of convenience—his car keys—in his attacker’s general direction; until his eyes adjust and he realises it's  _Tina Cohen-Chang_ , half-in half-out of her Prius, pretty heart-shaped face all lit up in the warm glow of the dash lights.  
  
Mortified, Mike lowers his keys.  
  
“…Uh…Hi.”  
  
He could swear she hadn’t been parked there before.  
  
“I’m- I’m sorry… Was this your spot?” He gestures jerkily at his own car: “I didn’t see… There wasn’t any—”  
  
“—Relax.  _This_  is my spot.” Tina interrupts, patting her hand against the hood of her car. “I won’t call the parking police.” She gives a little giggle that’s almost hypnotically musical; like wind-chimes.  
  
 _Keep it together Chang_.  
  
“Oh, um, ok.” Mike tries to smile. In return, Tina leans her elbows on the top of her car:  
  
“You looked really good out there tonight.”  
  
 _Oh. My. God._  
  
“… I did? That’s uh… Thankyou.”  
  
“Especially the dancing. You can really move.”  
  
Mike’s face drains of colour. He’d been trying not to show it; trying to keep it on the down-low and miss every couple of steps… But cranking  
out some Beyonce in front of all those people made him feel like he was flying.  
  
There’s a barely-quirked grin tugging at the corner of Tina’s enticingly red lips and Mike swallows hard.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
At the word, that tentative quirk curls into a steady, brilliant smile:  
  
“Maybe you should call me sometime.”  
  
“…I…I what…?”  
  
But Tina’s already slid into her car, slamming the door behind her and leaving Mike’s brain to make fizzy, useless firework type noises as he blinks after her.  
  
Did  _Tina Cohen-Chang_  just ask him out? Or, y’know, ask him to ask her? To call her, even though… he doesn’t have her number...? Even though he knows—the whole school knows—she’s dating Artie Abrams?  
  
But it’s too late for clarification: the girl’s already disappeared into the night, her eco-friendly Sweet Sixteenth gift barely even leaving a trail of exhaust fumes in the crisp Fall air.  
  
Mike cusses, unlocking his own embarrassingly shiny Mazda (he keeps his grades up: his dad appreciates it) and tossing his football stuff in the backseat. This night has  _got_  to be up there with smoking pot while staring at an iguana through a kaleidoscope and beating that guy from  _Gossip Girl_  at Mario Kart as one of the most surreal experiences of his life.  
  
He turns the ignition, engine stuttering to life and— illuminated in the backwash from his headlights— finds a cell phone number scrawled in careful cursive through the frost on the outside of his windshield, along with the instruction:  
  
 _Not kidding! I like your moves. Call me :)._  
  
*  
  
Kurt tucks his car keys as silently as he can into his jacket pocket, pausing in the hallway and listening like a cat.  
  
The TV’s on in the front room: it’s early for his dad to be home on a school night— but then, it’s probably not as early as Kurt thinks it is.  
His eyes flick down to the carpet, allowing himself one tiny smile. He can still taste Puck’s lips on his.  
  
He rests his temple briefly against the wall, considering: it’d be easy to just slip through the kitchen and downstairs; grab some yogurt or something. That’s what he usually does when he comes home after hours. If he gets started on his moisturising routine now he’ll still hit his pillow this side of midnight.  
  
(Perfect porcelain skin doesn’t come easy you know. Or cheap— thankyou Mr Dior.).  
  
His dad probably hasn’t even noticed he isn’t in yet, anyway; he never goes down to Kurt’s room without permission (it’s just safer for everyone).  
  
Making up his mind, Kurt toes his shoes off, lines them up carefully under the coat rack, and pads through to the living room.  
  
He hears the voice before he can see the face, and it takes a minute for his endorphin-fogged brain to make the connection:  
  
 _“…To them, all I have to say is,_ 'Shake it up a bit!'  _Be brave; get out of your box! Even if that box happens to be where you’re living…”_  
  
Oh  _heavens_. Kurt holds up a hand, warding off the demon visage suddenly assaulting his corneas. His birthday treat a couple of years back was a decent HD widescreen to watch the  _West Side Story_  re-mastered digital edition on: but right now, most every one of those pin-sharp 55 inches is filled with the huge nightmarish grin and curly Justin Timberlake locks of one improbably earnest looking Mr Schuester.  
  
 _“…You can often find me visiting the homeless, inspiring them out of poverty with music and song, and the simple suggestion:_  Hey! How about giving not being homeless a try, huh?  _You’d be surprised at how effective it can be.._  
  
 _Seriously?_  Kurt snorts, hand coming up to hide his laughing: who gave Mr Schuester’s sadism a TV slot?  
  
He squints at the logo in the corner. Oh. WOHN. Well that makes a lot more sense.  
  
Kurt glances over at his dad, who’s slumped in his usual recliner with a half-finished beer at his hand. “You know, he actually does do that.” Kurt assures him, going for lightly humorous: “It’s embarrassing for everyone concerned.”  
  
His father makes no reply. That’s not too unusual— they don’t engage in small talk very often— but Kurt, irked, purses his lips:  
  
“Hey dad…? Dad?”  
  
But the older man doesn’t shift, and when Kurt peers closer he can see how the warm indigo haze of the TV throws up the shadows under his father’s eyes, the half-day bristle on his chin.  
  
He’s fast asleep.  
  
 _“…But I know Ohio: it’s not always easy to break out of your comfort zone. People will tear you down; tell you you shouldn’t have bothered in the first place...”_  
  
Kurt blinks, staring back at the screen. Despite the bizarre pseudo-reality he feels he’s currently inhabiting, Mr Schuester’s smilingly enunciated words feel like an Acme hand-buzzer pressed to his heart.  
  
 _“…But let me encourage you, with the same encouragement I give naive cheerleaders and football players who join my glee club never even having set eyes on a_  glockenspiel  _before: there's not much of a difference between a theatre full of cheering fans, and an angry crowd hollering abuse at you: reality is, they’re both just making a lot of noise…”_  
  
Kurt bites the inside of his lip. They sure were making a lot of noise, he thinks, feeling the night’s excitement being sloughed piece by piece from his body like winter skin meeting a brand new loofah; when he sent that football on its perfect arc through the uprights; when Noah scored that touchdown; when eleven football jocks were hip-rolling their way to victory...  
  
“You’re such a cliché, dad.” Kurt mutters, snatching up the remote and stabbing the power off, banishing Mr Schuester's rictus-bearing face. His father doesn’t stir, and Kurt tosses the remote onto the sofa.  
  
In the abrupt darkness, he can still smell the unfamiliar aroma of cut-grass and bio-freeze and polyester sticking to his skin, and suddenly feels unbearably stupid for thinking that just  _for once_  his dad might have noticed something too.  
  
*  
  
“Hey ma.”  
  
“...Where've  _you_  been?”  
  
Puck’s mouth curls at the dull steel of his mom’s voice. Usually, how his mom manages to cram accusation into every syllable of those three little words would tick him off. But tonight, the linoleum under his sneakers feels like clouds, and most of his brain has been systematically  
switched off by the sly ministrations of Kurt’s lips, so his mom’s pissy mood barely dents his consciousness:  
  
“I had a football game,” He reminds her in a grunt, swinging his backpack down to the counter and unpacking his stuff for the laundry. I  _told_  you I had a game.”  
  
“Your sister got in an hour ago.”  
  
“Yeah? Great for her.”  
  
There’s chink of glass against formica. A messy chink, like his mom’s missed the coaster. There was full bottle of wine in the fridge before he went to school this morning— Puck’d bet his right arm and his signed  _Hot August Night_  album it’s not there anymore.  
  
“…She went to your game. With Matt Rutherford’s sister.”  
  
There’s something in her voice. Something flat and grey that makes Puck freeze, every hair on his neck prickling. His mom’s chair scrapes an agonizing diagonal across the floor.  
  
“Noah. Look at me.”  
  
“…W-what are you freaking out about? I just—”  
  
“— _Look at me_  Noah.”  
  
Puck does. He turns round, cocooning himself in his own arms and staring at his mom. She looks twenty years older than she is, but somehow even younger than Sarah. She stares at her son, and Puck stares back.  
  
The hand nearest her wine glass jerks, like she wants to take another gulp but aborts just in time. Instead, she reaches across and yanks the dishtowel from the cooker, wrapping it tight between her hands.  
  
“…Sarah said she saw you  _kissing_  one of the other boys on your team... When the game finished...  _Kissing_  one of the other boys.” Her eyes are big and surrounded by white: “I told her she didn’t see that.”  
  
A high-pitched buzz starts thrumming in Puck’s ears. It takes a long minute for words to gloop like treacle from his brain to his mouth.  
  
“…She shouldn’t…” Puck swallows harshly. “…she shouldn’t have even  _been_  there—“  
  
“—Is she telling the truth, Noah?”  
  
Puck stares at his mom’s pale-knuckled fingers, feeling cold sweat breaking out along his hairline, under his armpits, all across his abs. She can’t even say it, he realises numbly.  
  
“…Sh-she’s a fucking liar,” he stammers, eyes burning at the corners “she shouldn’t have even—“  
  
“—Noah—”  
  
“—She couldn’t-couldn’t  _see anything_ , sh-she’s—”  
  
“—Do you kiss boys Noah? Do you  _like_  kissing boys?”  
  
Puck slams his fist back against the counter, hating the tear that trickles down his cheekbone: “—What kind a dumbfuck question—?”  
  
“— _Noah_!”  
  
Puck glowers at the floor. His heartbeat starts throbbing behind his eyes, black pulsing in and out of his vision. He thinks he’s gonna be sick.  
  
He nods once: a sharp, involuntary jerk of his head.  
  
(Kurt had dropped him off outside. They’d kissed goodnight. They’d spent a long time kissing goodnight. It had made Puck’s blood sing.)  
  
The minute feels like a century.  
  
“…He’s my boyfriend.” He hears slide from his tongue, brain blank noisy static. His mom drops her dishtowel on the table. It slips and falls to the floor.  
  
“He’s my boyfriend.” Puck repeats, words trembling in his mouth. His mom rips her eyes away from his face; takes a few uneven strides towards the door.  
  
“Mom—“  
  
“—I can’t hear this—“  
  
“ _Mom_!” Puck chokes round his heart in his throat. But he can’t make his legs move.  
  
His mom’s feet pound on the stairs over his head, just like Sarah’s when she’s in a sulk and locks herself in her room to bitch on MSN. Her door slams, the bang reverberating through the house— and through Puck’s legs and feet and arms and chest and head as he grabs the edge of his mom’s dejected chair and hurls it to the floor.


End file.
